Scooby Doo and the House of Monsters
by Ninjamuffin13
Summary: The gang has been apart for four years, building their own lives. She'd never have thought Shaggy would go into teaching, even if it was just PE. And then, a letter arrives. Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for Girls, huh? Why not pay Shaggy a visit?
1. Chapter 1

**1**

It'd been four years since they'd split up. And not in their usual, 'Let's split up, Gang!' way, either. They literally had not been in the same room together for four years. The thought startled Velma into stillness, and she nearly stopped her sedan in the middle of the road. Had it really been so long?

She reflected quietly, bringing her car back up to speed on the empty, bog-lined path. The break-up hadn't been messy, or angry, or anything like that. There were no shouts, no hurt feelings, no tears. They'd simply… broken up. Drifted apart, to their own things. It wasn't that they weren't friends anymore, heck, she loved the gang like family, but they hadn't had anything to hold them together in one spot, once the mysteries dried up.

And that had been it, the mysteries. They'd always been the best when it came to masked men and ridiculous scams. They'd shown the world the truth in countless cases. Problem was, they'd been too good at it. Their exploits had become somewhat famous, and the imagination of teens everywhere was captured. They had been quite inspiring, apparently. It felt good.

It still felt good, the first time they arrived in a small town they'd gotten a tip about, only to find that a local group of rag-tag teens had followed their example and solved the mystery the day before they got there. They laughed and shaken hands with the group, excited and flattered to find they were making an impact on the world. It didn't feel so good the second time. Or the third. It stopped feeling good at all somewhere around the tenth.

After a while, the mysteries started to become few and far between. People had gained confidence, all across the nation. They weren't afraid of men in masks anymore. If a bunch of meddling kids (and Velma almost missed being called that) could foil a villainous smuggling ring, who were they to let it happen in their town? Bands of teens and adults alike prowled the dark alleys and ancient mansions, stomping out crime wherever they could.

The gang stopped chasing mysteries when the brand names appeared. _Mystery Squad _and _Question Hunters _and _Monster-Ops _and half a dozen others, all claiming to be the best of the best. There were even a few claiming themselves to be the 'Original' _Mystery Inc. _The game, as it were, had changed. The gang had been in the business before it had been a business, when it had been about a love for puzzles and chases and exotic locales. They couldn't make themselves a part of this new craze they'd accidentally started.

So, they just… didn't. The bespectacled woman could still remember sitting in the soda parlor, reading while Shaggy and Scooby shoveled food down their throats and Daphne idly selected some songs from the jukebox play list. Fred had come rushing through the doors, his usual cheery grin stuck on his face and a scrap of paper in his hand.

"_You guys," _His voice had been full of that electric excitement he always got when there was a mystery at hand or a trap to build. _"I just heard on the radio about this Corn Yeti that's been-" _

"_Pass." _She hadn't even looked up from her book. If it had been on the radio, there was no way they'd get there first. She'd rather get lost in the mystery in front of her than chase one that'd be solved before she saw it.

"_Like, what she said."_ As though Shaggy and Scooby needed an excuse to avoid Corn Yeti, whatever those were. They were content to eat and play in the park and hang out with the gang.

Freddie's face had fallen a bit, but he had managed to keep smiling. He'd turned to Daphne, but she just sighed and looked away.

"_Someone's probably unmasking the Yeti as we speak, Fred." _ Her voice had been quiet, resigned. If any of them had realised they were at the end of the line, it had been her. Velma didn't look up from her book, but she could picture the disappointment on Fred's face.

"_Yeah, I guess….." _He'd tossed the paper in the trash, then slumped into the booth next to Shaggy. He managed to fake an optimistic expression. _"Oh well, we'll get the next one."_

They hadn't been on a case since.

Without the mysteries, they'd found themselves doing other things to fill their time. Normal things, that didn't force them together in a van or into sewers or scare them out of their minds. They found themselves apart for longer and longer stretches of time.

Daphne mostly stayed around her home, the ancestral Blake Manor, having decided to write a book about their exploits. Fred visited her for a while, before her parents made it clear that he wasn't welcome. Now that Daphne was through with her 'Adventurous' phase, her parents saw no reason to allow her to associate with anything but the most upper of the upper crust. Not that it had stopped her from seeing Freddie, of course, but it had made their meetings scarcer. That went double for the rest of them.

Fred, oddly enough, became the host of a children's TV show. All of them being minor celebrities, he'd been hired on the spot. It helped that he was absolutely great with kids, since he himself was a child in a man's body. _Mystery Time with Freddie_ quickly became the most popular show on television among kids ages 5-13+. (It also became quite popular among the mothers of kids ages 5-13+, but that had less to do with the content and more to do with Freddie's biceps.) Velma herself had made two guest appearances, but being in front of a camera wasn't really her thing.

What _was_ her thing, however, was the Occult. Ever since Oakhaven, where she'd witnessed the power of magic and the full truth of the supernatural, she'd been unable to shake it from her mind. Witches existed. Magic existed. What else was there? It was the biggest mystery she'd ever come across, and she couldn't ignore it. And now, she finally had the time to look into it. She spent at least a year on research before leaving, but leave she did. She traveled the world (It was surprising how much money you make over years of freelance sleuthing), seeking out every scrap of evidence, every whisper of the unknown. Slowly, she built up a picture of the real world. Some weeks were quiet, peaceful. Others found her in the middle of a pursuit- or being pursued. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts and goblins and a whole lot more. Things really did go bump in the night. It was almost like the old days, if only the rest of the gang were with her. Freddie and Daph, Shaggy and Scooby.

He'd left before she had, actually, and taken Scooby with him. The quiet life really hadn't suited him. Oh, he'd been fine for the first month or two. He and Scooby had spent their days eating and sleeping and goofing around. They were ok with that. It wasn't until Freddie got his job and she'd buried herself in her research that Shaggy had started to get restless. At first, he'd gotten a job in town, as a DJ for the local radio station. He actually had quite the voice for radio, and the gang always made sure to tune in. That lasted about three months before Shaggy couldn't stand it anymore. He had too much energy, a need to move and experience that he couldn't fulfill in a DJ's booth. How surprised he'd been when he'd realised that he actually _missed_ being chased by monsters.

The rest of the gang had been even more surprised when he'd told them he and Scooby were leaving. It hit Fred the hardest; He and Shaggy had been like brothers, and they'd never been apart like this. He begged Shaggy to stay, but the lanky man declared that he'd already lined up a job. Velma couldn't believe her ears when Shaggy had declared he was going to teach at a boarding school in Louisiana. Sure, he was just going to be teaching Physical Education, but still. Shaggy. _Teacher_. Does not compute. And Louisiana? That was quite a way to go to teach a gym class. Even after he'd explained that he'd worked there for a few weeks in the past, it hadn't made sense.

In the end, though, he'd left. He couldn't promise to call, as _Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for Girls _(And a snarky, cynical voice in her head wondered if the fact that it was an all-girls school was why he was willing to travel so far to teach gym.) wasn't electronics friendly, but he did promise to write. He said he couldn't guarantee that the mailbox wouldn't eat the letters, but he'd write them. That man had the most bizarre sense of humour.

The day he'd left had been just over four years ago. It had been the last time the whole gang had been together. In fact, it had been the last time Velma had seen _any_ of the gang. It wasn't that she'd avoided them, of course. It was just that she'd been busy with her research. Time had gotten away from her. _Years_ had gotten away from her. Four years wasn't a huge amount of time, but…. It was. It was an enormous amount of time to just forget about your closest friends.

Velma shook her head. It didn't matter. In just another week or so, the whole gang would be together again. She could apologise then. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, then flicked on the radio. Nothing but static. She'd been checking the stations every few miles, listening as they became fewer and fainter. Now, they were all gone. She flicked it back off, thinking to the letter in her bag.

_Like, Dear Velma,_

(No, Shaggy hadn't peppered the page with the word 'like'. She just found it impossible to imagine his voice without his usual verbal tic.)

_I don't know if you, like, got my other letters. The Post Office doesn't exactly exist out here, so mailing is kind of hit or miss. Since this is, like, an emergency, Miss Grimwood promised me she'd, like, personally make sure you'd get this one. _

(She hadn't gotten any of the other letters, but that was probably because she hadn't been home to get them. How this one managed to find her was a complete mystery, seeing as she'd spent the last week in the Rockies, following a lead about some cultists. She simply woke up one morning to find the letter lying on her chest.)

_I know you're probably, like, really busy with your research, but you guys are like the only ones I can trust with this. No one else is gonna be able to help us but Mystery Inc. Plus, you guys are, like, the only ones who wouldn't call me crazy or shrug me off as freaking out over, like, nothing. _

(While it would be just like Shaggy to freak out over nothing, this letter had been written with a calm hand. Whatever was going on, it was real, Velma was sure of that much.)

_I can't go into details here, for, like, reasons I can't talk about. Total weirdsville, I know. But it really is important. I, like, can't figure this mystery out without you guys. Come to the school, and I'll explain, like, everything, I promise. _

(And that little passage set off every alarm in Velma's head.)

_Anyway, the girls really can't, like, wait to meet you, Velms. I haven't seen them this excited since, like, last Halloween! And I can't wait for you to meet them, either. All I ask is that you, like, try not to judge them by how they look. They're not, like, all that normal, but they're good kids._

(She now regretted never asking Shaggy more about the school before he left. For all she knew, he'd been spending the last few years looking after delinquents or something.)

_I even managed to finally convince them to, like, not kill the garden this year, so we have tons of, like, fresh food! When you get here, we'll have, like, a huge feast to celebrate! _

(Ok, that was pure Shaggy. The little alarms in her head quieted a bit.)

_I've like, written some directions down with this letter, so you should be able to find the school alright. Just, like, don't try to find it in a thunderstorm. The road is kinda twisty and narrow in some spots. And totally spooky._

_I really can't wait to, like, see you guys again! _

_- Norville_

(And that had been what really worried her. Shaggy never went by his first name and certainly wouldn't sign a letter with it. Not unless there was something seriously wrong.)

_Like, P.S. - BRING SCOOBY SNACKS. _

(She laughed. Of course Shaggy would end his rollercoaster of a letter with a request for food. She bought an entire case of Scooby Snacks and did her best to ignore his signature.)

Velma sighed, glancing at the thickly packed trees off the side of the road. Just a few more hours and she'd be there. Then she could see for herself that he was ok and things weren't as serious as she'd imagined. She nodded to herself.

Everything was going to be fine.

The building was smaller than she'd imagined, looking more like a small mansion than a boarding school. The whole thing was ringed by a ten or eleven feet high wall of what looked like solid mortar, spider webbed with cracks and chips. The road lead to a wrought-iron double gate that looked wide enough for a steamroller to pass by without worry. A plaque, or a wooden sign, rather, hung on the right side of the gate.

"Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for… Ghouls?" Velma blinked. The other words were printed neatly and professionally in black, but the last one was sloppily applied in red paint, hugely out of proportion with the rest. "I wonder if they know someone defaced their sign?" Probably the boys from the camp she passed on her way in.

She stopped in front of the gate, glancing left and right for a groundsman or gatekeeper, but saw no one. Odd. She shrugged, getting out of the car. After a few moments of stretching and wiggling her feet to restore proper blood flow, she stepped up to the gates and peered past them. The school building was about a football field up the path, which was lined with small stone buildings and benches, sitting atop a small rise. There was a great, old oak tree sitting just in front of it, long dead. She couldn't see anyone.

She took a step back, frowning at the gate. It didn't look to have a lock, so she could probably just-

"Jinkies!" She took a half-step back, raising one arm defensively as the gate silently swung inward of its own accord. She quickly checked the ground for a pressure plate or similar device, but found nothing but the dirt of the road. She couldn't spy any mechanism on the wall or gate itself, either. Very odd.

She climbed back into her car and cautiously drove through the opening. She noted that the gates swung themselves closed after she passed. Very odd indeed. She turned her attention back ahead, and her sense of unease increased. They weren't benches and sheds. They were gravestones and mausoleums. The whole area leading to the school was a graveyard. She suppressed a shiver.

She found herself slamming on the brakes as she neared the school. Just beyond the tree, right where the rise leveled out, was a moat. Due to the curve of the ground, she'd nearly driven right into it. She climbed back out of her car, walking to the edge of the pit. It surrounded the whole building. She could just spot a drawbridge on the far side, some ten yards away.

"Hm," She regarded the mansion. "Open sesame?" She jumped back, eyes widening in surprise, as the drawbridge rapidly descended. "Wasn't expecting that." Now that the bridge was down, she could see the heavy wooden door that had been hidden behind it. She was contemplating walking across the bridge when the door swung open.

A huge man, nearly seven feet tall and built like a runner, quickly strode through the doorway, grinning widely. He had bright brown eyes and a short crop of reddish-brown hair, as well as what Velma instantly mentally dubbed a 'mountain man' scruff of beard. He wore a workout jersey and jogging shorts, which showed his well-defined muscles. Before she could react, he wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off the ground.

"Like, Velma, you came!" Belatedly, she realized that this giant was Shaggy. Had they really been apart so long that he looked huge to her? Maybe it was all the new muscle mass; being a gym teacher was apparently quite the workout.

"Shaggy!" She hugged him back when she realized who he was. "Of course I came! I drove down right after I got your letter." He put her down gently. "Jinkies, just look at you!" She tried not to stare at him, but he looked so…. Different. She could see the old Shaggy, the one she'd always known, but the changes in him were shocking. She could hardly believe her eyes; Shaggy Rogers looked like a grownup. He laughed.

"Like, what about you?" She tucked her hair behind her ear with a wry grin. Sure, it was longer than her usual pageboy, but that was just because she'd been too busy to get it cut the last few weeks. She was still the same Velma. Same coke-bottle glasses, same freckles. She wasn't wearing her trademark sweater/skirt ensemble, but that was only because it was way too warm in Louisiana for clothes like that. And maybe she'd gotten into better shape herself from all the running around ferreting out the supernatural she'd been doing. Still, she felt like the same old Velma. She wondered if Shaggy felt the same way about himself. "Like, you look like you could do my job!"

"And how is your job?" She gave his attire an obvious once over. "Considering the rest of the place, I was expecting something a little more macabre." He laughed again.

"Yeah, they really like things nice and spooky around here. It's actually, like, brightened up a bit since Scoob and me have been around." He gestured out to the school grounds. "I was going to, like, run a warm-up lap or two before my first session of the day. Why don't you, like, come along and I can show you around?"

After grabbing a light jacket from the car, she did just that.

They followed the path she'd driven up, turning at a small fork and running through the graveyard, which Shaggy helpfully pointed out was, in fact, a graveyard. She was mildly surprised at how relaxed he seemed, but she supposed even Shaggy couldn't spend four years with a graveyard in his front lawn and not get used to it. She was also a touch surprised by how fast he was. He'd always been the fastest of the gang, excluding Scooby of course, but even with Velma's own recently improved running abilities, she could barely keep up and she knew he was holding back for her sake. Had she improved so little, or had he improved that much?

"And, like, over there's the bog. Don't get too close, there's, like, quicksand." And the school grounds were much, much more extensive than they first appeared. They easily stretched for miles in each direction, encompassing way more terrain than she'd realized.

"Just how big is this place?" They'd started on a hill, gone through a graveyard, cut through what looked like an overgrown apple orchard, and now a bog? She made sure to stick close to him; Quicksand was never fun.

"It's, like, pretty big today." He laughed. Today? What was that supposed to mean? She opened her mouth to voice that very question. "Like, over there's the pumpkin patch, they should start growing in pretty soon." He pointed. About an acre seemed to have been set aside for the gourds. It fit rather well with the atmosphere of the place. And next to it…. "And, like, the garden." It wasn't hard to notice; the garden was the only thing that looked healthy for miles. There were tomatoes, corn, some various squashes and bushes of vegetables, pepper plants, grape-vines, at least two pineapple plants, and a dozen other things. Velma idly wondered how they'd made all these different plants grow in the same garden, but shook the thought away; when it came to food, Shaggy always found a way. "Speaking of, how about a little snack?" He reached out and snagged at least three tomatoes, wolfing them down without breaking stride. Same old Shaggy.

"I think," She panted. "I'll pass." Running and eating was not a skill she possessed, nor did she fancy a stomach cramp. He just shrugged and grabbed a few more treats before they passed the garden.

She hated to admit it, but she was pretty winded when they finally made it back to her car, which she leaned upon to catch her breath. A lap around the school grounds had been a lot farther than she'd anticipated. Shaggy was giving her a sort of apologetic grin, though he also looked a mite amused, jogging in place as he was.

"This is a warm-up?" She gave him half a glare. He just laughed. Again. Someday, she was sure, it would come down to a battle of wits, and then it would be her turn to laugh. And laugh she would. "What kind of torturous gym class are you running out here?"

"Heh, like, sorry Velma. I guess-" He was cut off as a mass of teeth, fur, and claws hit him in a flying tackle with a high-pitched howl. He and the mass tumbled over each other a few times, before they rolled to a stop with the mass on top. Velma's breath caught as she looked at the creature. Thick tan fur, bright yellow eyes, long and pointed ears. Long claws, sharp fangs in a short, rounded snout. Werewolf.

She turned back to her car, flinging the door open. She had a small silver dagger somewhere in her bag. Where was it? She'd never run into a werewolf before, but she'd learned to always be prepared for any monster she might meet during her research. She scrambled for the weapon, throwing less important items across the floor of her car. There! She pulled sharply, tugging the blade free from both her bag and its hilt, and whirled around.

"Ok, ok! You, like, got me Winnie!" Shaggy laughed, pushing the monster off of himself with a casual shove. The werewolf sat back on her haunches with a self-satisfied snort. "Like, I guess you're ready to get going, huh?"

"You betcha, Coach!" Her voice was somewhere between a scratchy growl and a girlish lilt. She snickered, then caught sight of Velma. "Hey, who's the new girl?"

Velma just gaped at the scene, her brain trying and failing to make sense of it. The dagger dangled loosely in her hand. Talking werewolf. _Talking_ werewolf. Not ripping or tearing or eating. In the daylight. Shaggy laughing. Not scared. Shaggy not scared of a werewolf. The talking daytime werewolf. In jogging shorts.

"Bwuh?" Velma blinked. Shaggy laughed again, climbing back to his feet.

"Like, Winnie, this is my friend Velma." He held out his hands between the two of them. "Velma, this is Winnie. She's, like, one of the girls here at the school." The werewolf stood up, walking (prowling, her mind supplied) towards her. She had her own exercise outfit, a baby blue reflection of Shaggy's. Why did a werewolf need clothes?

"You're a werewolf." Most brilliant insight of the day award to Dinkley. The werewolf looked over to Shaggy, then back at Velma.

"Uh, yeah." Winnie raised her eyebrows, staring at her as though _Velma_ were the strange one! "Coach Shaggy told us all about you." She leaned towards said coach. "I thought you said she was the smart one?" It was the loudest whisper in history.

Velma did the only reasonable thing. She fainted.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey guys. I was rather surprised by the large number (yes, 11 is a large number for me) of reviews I got for the first chapter of this. I was expecting, like, one. So eleven was a nice surprise. Thanks.

To answer a few questions: Yes, the rest of the Gang will show up, and soon. No, I haven't got any romances planned out between Shaggy and Velma (or Shaggy and the Ghouls, for that matter) as of yet, but, considering how long this is gonna be, I'm not discounting the possibility. We'll just have to wait and see. Also, Velma may or may not be finding herself performing magic (again, we'll wait and see). And, no, Shaggy will not be turning into a werewolf.

As far as which movies/shows I'll be counting as canon for this fic…. Reluctant Werewolf is out. Boo Brothers is out. In fact, most of the movies are out by virtue of me having not seen them/conflicting with Ghoul School. Mystery Inc is both out and in, with bits and pieces of it being merged with the original show's canon. Ghoul School is obviously in. References and nods to various series and movies will probably occur regardless of how canon I arbitrarily declare them to be.

Anyway, I should also probably mention that this story will contain horror elements and probably blood and death and whatnot down the road. Just a heads up.

But enough talk! Have at you!

* * *

><p><strong>2<strong>

Ok, maybe fainted was too strong a word. It was really more of a…. momentary blackout. Because Velma 'Firebrand' Dinkley, Occult Hunter of four years, certainly did not faint in the face of monsters or the bizarre. Preposterous to even think such a thing.

"Like, Velma, are you ok?" A strange giant (No, that's Shaggy with a beard.) had a grip on her shoulder, crouched down next to where she sat propped against her car. The dagger was lying next to her hand; she must have dropped it. The werewolf (Winnie the werewolf? Poor girl, cursed to both monsterdom and an alliterative name.) stood off to the side, snickering to herself. She probably thought making people fai- ah, momentarily black out was hilarious.

"I'm alright." She nodded, blinking away the lingering black spots in her eyes and grabbing the dagger. "I'm good. I was just surprised." Shaggy helped her to her feet, nodding. That was good; if he could believe it, so could she.

"Like, believe me," He gave a self-depreciating laugh. "Me and Scoob did that, like, every day for the first month." She believed him. "You get used to it, like, eventually."

"Hm." She eyed the werewolf, awkwardly trying to hold the dagger in a non-threatening way. For her part, Winnie didn't even seem to notice the blade; Velma wasn't sure if it was because the werewolf didn't consider it a danger or just a genuine lack of observational skills. "Winnie, was it?" The werewolf's ears twitched at the sound of her name, and she gave the bespectacled woman a tooth-filled grin.

"That's my name, don't wear it _oooooowwww_-t!" Oh boy. Velma winced at the piercing howl; she could only hope it wasn't compulsive. "You're the Coach's friend, huh? It's a real howl to meet cha!" Oh God, she did puns too.

"That's right." She was glad that Winnie didn't seem to have the manners to attempt to shake hands; between her claws and Velma's dagger, the outcome wouldn't have been pretty. "Shaggy and I go way back. We used to solve- Jinkies!" She had to forcibly shove down the impulse to bring her dagger to bear when Winnie suddenly invaded her personal space, shoving her snout in her face and sniffing loudly.

"You smell like the Coach used to!" The werewolf helpfully informed her. "Papa says you can tell a lot about people by how they smell! Did you and Coach Shaggy rub together a lot, so you'd smell the same? Papa used to do that to me to keep the other wolves away from me, now I do that to the Coach to keep them off him!" As if to demonstrate, Winnie turned and jumped up onto Shaggy, rubbing her cheek against his head and neck in a manner not unlike an attention-seeking Scooby. The researcher in Velma was absolutely fascinated by this display of bestial instinct. The rest of her was….. Not. Shaggy withstood the fuzzy assault in his usual obliging way for a few moments, before shaking her off with another laugh.

"Like, ok, ok!" He seemed oblivious to the heavy blush sported by both females (How Winnie's blush was visible through her peach-fuzz facial fur, Velma wasn't sure), proving to Velma that he'd changed far less on the inside than he had on the outside. She was just glad that the apparently teenage (Did werewolves age at the same rate as normal people? Her research was inconclusive on that point.) werewolf had stopped groping one of her oldest friends.

"Winnie!" Velma's head whipped around to this new, scandalized voice. "Is that any way to act in front of a guest?" On the drawbridge, a woman looking like a shorter, plumper, and more conservatively dressed Elvira rapidly approached. She waved cheerfully to the brunette. "Oh, hello darling!" Winnie did her best to look properly scolded.

"Sorry, Miss Grimwood." Unsurprisingly, it sounded as though she said this particular phrase on a regular basis. The miniature Mistress of the Dark paid the werewolf no mind, instead reaching forward and grasping Velma's empty hand.

"So wonderful that you could make it, dear. I'm Miss Grimwood, the Headmistress here." She smiled kindly. "Shaggy has told us all so much about you." Her eyes drifted down to the silver dagger. "But he never mentioned that you were a knife-wielding psychopath!" Velma's eyes bulged as she hid the blade behind her back, as though that would make Miss Grimwood forget she'd seen it.

"Ah, no! No, no, I can explain!" She waved her free hand in front of her rapidly.

"No need!" The short woman shot a knowing smile in Shaggy's direction. "I should have guessed our Physical Education teacher had a delightfully bloodcurdling surprise in store for us in." She shook her head amusedly. "I'll have to see about _digging up_ something for you to practice your swing on; one must stay sharp, after all."

"That's our Coach!" Winnie piped up proudly. Said Coach just heaved a sheepish shrug, giving Velma a helpless look that quite plainly said 'just go with it'. And here she thought the teenage talking daytime werewolf (And there went the Ninja Turtles theme in her head) was going to be the oddest thing she dealt with today. Poor, naïve her from five minutes ago.

"Indeed he is, Winnie." Miss Grimwood agreed, pride lacing her voice as well. "And as such, don't you think it's time you two got started for the day? I'll take care of showing our guest to her room." Shaggy and Winnie both nodded.

"Like, sure thing Miss G." He gave Velma a small wave and a reassuring smile. "I'll, like, see you at lunch, Velms."

"Yeah!" Winnie flashed another toothy smile. "I'm cooking today, so it'll be really rotten!" Velma found herself unsure of how to respond. They seemed to like things in reverse around here, so did rotten mean literally rotten or just good?

Her hesitation in responding turned out not to matter, as Shaggy chose that moment to turn and bolt down the path, Winnie spinning and chasing after him on all fours with an indignant bark. Velma watched them for a moment as they immediately set about leaping over headstones as though they were hurdles and dodging and weaving around mausoleums in what looked like the fastest game of extreme tag she'd ever seen. No wonder Shaggy had gotten so much quicker, if this was how he started each day.

"Nothing like a game of wolf and rabbit to get young blood flowing." Her attention was brought back to Miss Grimwood, who was smiling wistfully, as if remembering her own days playing in graveyards. "And Shaggy makes a fine rabbit, doesn't he?" (Wait, if Shaggy was a rabbit and Winnie was a wolf, what happened if she caught him?) She let out a content sigh. "Now, come along, come along, dear. I'll show you to your room."

"Sure, just let me….." Velma turned back to her sedan, intending to slip the dagger back into its hilt in her bag, only to find her car inhabited by a mass of tentacles. "Uh?" The tentacles shifted, revealing themselves to be but a single entity - a very posh octopus. With a toupee and bowtie. It quite easily hefted all of her luggage and _walked_ towards the mansion. (But it's an invertebrate! It should be a big blob of rubbery jello on land! How is it walking upright without a spine? _Or bones_? And what is that bowtie attached to?)

"Don't worry," Miss Grimwood took her by the arm and slowly trailed after the octo-butler. "Your things are well in hand. Or, tentacle, if you rather." She laughed, making a small gesture with her hand. The open door of Velma's car swung itself closed, and the bespectacled woman suddenly felt much, much less confused.

Magic. _Of course_. She felt like such an idiot. Within two seconds of receiving Shaggy's letter, she had slipped right back into her role as the team scientist and skeptic, throwing out her last four years of experience like they hadn't happened. It was almost as bad as when she had first started out, with her inability to accept that the laws of physics were not immutable. Amateur mistake. The octopus was probably under some kind of true form spell. Or maybe a locomotion spell? Then again, that assumed that the octopus was a real octopus in the first place. It was possible that-

"….me to apologize for Winnie's behavior." Velma felt slightly rude for allowing her speculation to distract her from her hostess, so she forced her attention back to Miss Grimwood as she was led into the main foyer of the school. "Werewolves have difficulty grasping the concept of personal space at the best of times," The Headmistress explained. "And the young ones get especially frisky when the moon is nearly full."

"Oh, I see." (Frisky? Was that just a turn of phrase or….. The implications were unsettling. More research needed.) "It's, um, no problem." In an effort to not think about what it would mean for a werewolf to be 'frisky' (and what connotations that would add to the rabbit and wolf game), Velma gazed about the foyer. If the small display from the Headmistress hadn't reminded her that magic was afoot in the world, this definitely would have; The ceiling was at least three stories up, in a two-story building. Not to mention that two doors that stood next to each other both led to different, open rooms. "What a…. lovely home you have." It really, really wasn't.

"Thank you." Miss Grimwood said congenially, leading her up the grand staircase. "It's so difficult to keep everything dusty in this humid weather, but we manage. Tell me, have you been a believer long?" Velma blinked at the sudden change in topic.

"Believer of wha- oh!" Her free hand went up to grab the crucifix around her neck. "I'm not, well, I mean, it's just for, uh…" She floundered.

"A bit of protection, hmm?" The short woman gave her a knowing look. "Like the silver protects against werewolves?" Velma flushed in a cross between embarrassment and apprehension. She had really been hoping to avoid having the Headmistress realize that she'd been one reflex away from stabbing one of her students.

"Ah, yeah, actually…" Velma had only run into a vampire once before. It had been weak from a lack of blood and an approaching dawn, and she hadn't been alone when facing it. Not only that, but the Priest had brought along cloves of garlic and bottles of holy water as well, meaning the undead predator had been all but helpless. And yet, it had still been one of the single most frightening experiences in her life. She'd worn a crucifix ever since. "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend-"

"Not at all!" Miss Grimwood waved the very notion away. "I know how important it is for us humans, especially those who can't perform magic, to take whatever means they can to protect themselves." She laughed. "I just want to assure you that my girls are all well behaved and, if that isn't enough, a friend of Shaggy is a friend of ours."

"Oh. Thanks, that's actually pretty reassuring." And it was, for some reason. She couldn't say why, but something about this woman promoted instant trust. Velma still entertained fears that an over-eager werewolf might gore her by mistake, but at least she wouldn't be devoured by anyone on purpose.

"But, just so you know," Miss Grimwood reached out and gave the cross a playful bat. "_That _isn't going to do anything against any vampire of proper strength and breeding, regardless of faith." She paused. "In fact, I believe Sibella has taken to wearing one on occasion herself, for the sake of irony." Oh. That was not as nice to hear. And who was Sibella? (A vampire, obviously. So, they had vampires and werewolves both at the school? What else might they have? And weren't vampires and werewolves supposed to be enemies? Apparently not.)

"Jinkies…." She sighed. Four years of research, scraping and searching for the tiniest bits of information, only for her to learn in the space of twenty minutes that most of what she knew was wrong. To her inner researcher, that was both depressing and ridiculously exciting. (She was really kicking herself for not visiting Shaggy sooner, now.) "I guess I don't know as much as I thought I did."

"Now, now," Miss Grimwood gave her a pat on the hand. "No use crying over spilt milk, Ms. Dinkley. You'll have plenty of time to learn all you want while you're here; this is a school, after all." She chuckled. "But, first, your room." They came to a stop in front of a plain brown door, and it occurred to Velma that they had been walking in a straight line for far longer than should have been possible without leaving the building. (And would that be the result of spelling the doorways to transport you to an entirely different place? Or would it be easier to spell the rooms themselves to be bigger inside than out? Either way, Velma foresaw herself getting lost more than once in the close future.)

The door swung open (without a gesture from Miss Grimwood, Velma noted. Interesting.), revealing a perfectly normal-looking, if disused, bedroom. Surprise surprise. A rather nice four-poster bed stood next to the far wall, dressed up in blue and cobwebs. An end table sat next to it, topped with an old lamp whose shade was nearly entirely eaten by moths. There was a large wardrobe to the side, large enough for all of her clothes, she was sure, that didn't seem to be in too bad of a shape. Her things had been placed in the center of the room, neatly stacked on the floor. All in all, an average, non-magical, decidedly un-space-time bending room. Which was good, as she doubted she'd be able to sleep in a room that was physically and geometrically impossible.

"I'll just let you settle in." Miss Grimwood stepped to the side, allowing Velma to step into the room. "I have some duties to attend to, but I'll send one of the girls up in a bit to show you around, hmm?"

"Thanks, Miss Grimwood, I-" When Velma looked away from the room, she found herself to be alone. "Ah, of course. I probably should have expected that at this point." Her old 'suspicious hostess alert' senses kicked in, but she forced herself to ignore them, (being creepy and suspicious seemed to be part and parcel with this place) and stepped into her room. She was immediately grateful to find that the room seemed as normal from the inside as it did from the outside. It was dusty, and probably bug-infested, but she'd slept in worse over the last few years.

She kicked the door closed behind her and finally stored the dagger where it belonged, then immediately walked over to the bed and pulled back the sheets. She'd learned over the years of hotel hopping (not to mention all the times the gang had slept in the Mystery Machine on the road) to never take a bed for granted. She checked the mattress first, finding it to be in good condition. No mysterious lumps or stains, no springs sticking up through the material to skewer her in her sleep, and no visible bedbugs. (Granted, it was unlikely for there to be any in such a seldom-used room as this. At least, she thought it was seldom-used. Hard to tell when rot and decay were actual décor choices instead of just the result of neglect.) She nodded with a touch of approval and bundled up the dusty sheets; she had her own, clean sheets in one of her bags.

She turned to fetch them and paused. Oh. There, in the corner that had been blocked by the door, stood a small, hip-high bookcase. It was full of books. She did _not_ run over. It was just a very fast walk. A jog at most. She grinned in a decidedly unhinged way as she read over the titles of the books therein, her inner researcher practically salivating at the bountiful feast of knowledge before her.

_A History of Grimwood. Minor Magics for House and Home. Zombies, Gorlaims, and the Fleshy Undead. The Necromantic's Guide to Love Beyond the Vale. Swamps and Bogs: Life in the Muck. Under the Bed, Over the Head. Salt Circles, a Biography of Tamsin Blight._

And that was just the top row.

(Oh yeah, she _really_ should have visited Shaggy sooner.)

* * *

><p>…<em>heeheehee…<em>

Velma blinked, looking up from _A History of Grimwood_, (It had seemed prudent to begin with the book that would tell her more about her current lodgings and its owners.) at the sudden noise at the edge of her hearing. She glanced about suspiciously. Her things were still in the center of the room, where she'd left them. The stack of books sitting next to her on the (still unmade) bed was still orderly and complete. She frowned. In her experience, sounds that you may or may not have imagined in the spooky old mansion tended to be important more often than not. With a practiced ease, she returned her eyes to the page, keeping her ears perked as she read.

…_.heeheeheehee…._

That one was definitely not her imagination. She forced herself to keep her eyes on the book, searching for the source of the sound with her hearing only. She shivered, and then realized that the temperature had dropped sometime within the last minute.

"Ok, who's there?" All of the girls here were well behaved and wouldn't hurt her, she reminded herself.

_Heeheehahee_

The giggling was moving, sliding around the room. To her left, then in front of her, then to her right, behind her…. Circling, drifting closer and closer. She risked a peek over the top of her book when the giggling passed in front of her, but she saw nothing.

"Is this some kind of joke?" If it was, Velma wasn't amused. "Scare the newbie, right?" If that was the goal, it was, admittedly, working.

_Ha! Heeheehaha! _

The voice was high pitched, nearly painfully so, with a manic tilt on the edges that made Velma uneasy. It was getting louder, and more deranged, as it came closer. It squeaked on the higher tones, like nails on vinyl, or the end of a record scratch. It hurt her ears.

_AHAHA! HAHAaaAHAAAHEeEaaAAA! _

As it circled behind her again, so close she could almost feel it, Velma leapt from the bed and spun to face it. Everything appeared to be normal. The stack of books had fallen over from her sudden movement, but, aside from that…. Even the temperature had risen back to its original state. Velma let out a breath. What in the world had all _that_ been abo

_Heh._

Velma's neck made a worrisome cricking sound as she snapped her gaze to the ceiling. The book in her hand and her mouth both fell. There was a young woman's head sticking out of the ceiling. There was a young woman's _head_ sticking out of the ceiling. The bespectacled woman blinked.

_There was a young woman's head sticking out of the ceiling!_

"Hi there." The head greeted, sounding incredibly amused. A long white bob of hair, split with a single blue stripe, hung down, nearly reaching Velma. The blue stripe matched the young woman's translucent blue skin rather well. She giggled again, softly this time. "Miss Grimwood sent me to fetch you for lunch."

"Um, hi." Velma swallowed. At least she didn't faint (black out momentarily, she mentally amended) or try to stab this one. That was an improvement. The head descended slowly, neck, shoulders, and the rest, wrapped in a simple blue dress, following after. The young woman (late teens, very early 20s at the oldest, assuming she was as old as she looked and not ageless) did a small flip in the air to float upright, her hair bob coming to rest over half of her face.

"I'm Phantasma!" The floating girl grasped Velma's hand enthusiastically, and her skin tingled from the cold and not-quite-there substance of Phantasma's hand. "Everyone calls me Phanny!" She giggled again, a bit of mania bleeding back into her voice. (Phanny the Phantom? What was it with these people and alliteration? Or was she a Phantom? With the shrieking way she laughed, Velma almost wanted to classify her as a banshee. Though, she was pretty sure hearing a banshee's shriek was supposed to be fatal, so Phanny was probably a different kind of spirit. It would probably be rude to ask.)

"Velma." The very witty Occult Hunter introduced herself. "I'm-"

"Coach Shaggy's friend! _Heeheehee._" Velma managed to not wince at the giggle. "He's been talking about all of you for the last week; The great Mystery Inc! You guys are famous among monsters."

"Really?" Velma extricated her hand from Phantasma's grasp. "I wouldn't think the monster world would care about a bunch of 'meddling kids' foiling property value scams."

"It was all those unmaskings of yours that did it." The translucent girl explained. "All those fake wannabe-monsters were making the rest of us look bad _and_ crowding in on our turf. Thanks to you, though, now we've all got a lot more…. _breathing room_! _AHA aHAhaaaHA!" _Velma did wince at this, though she wasn't sure if it was from the laugh or the pun. (Seriously, do they _teach_ puns here, she wondered, or what?)

"Oh, um, glad we could help?" She offered. It was kind of nice to know that she had some good karma built up among monsters. Made it slightly less likely they would rip her limb from limb.

"How exciting!" Phantasma abruptly flew a quick circle around Velma. "Mystery Inc, coming out of retirement at our school! I just know that you'll be able to figure out-" She threw a hand over her mouth with a small gasp. "Oops, we're not supposed to talk about it; Coach Shaggy wanted you to have a few days to adjust to what's 'normal' around here first." She let out a small giggle. "I swear, sometimes I'm just such an airhead." For emphasis, she pushed her hand directly through her head and out the other side, wiggling her fingers. (And wasn't _that_ was just plain disturbing to look at?) Velma debated pressing the matter, but decided that she didn't want to get Phantasma in trouble. After all, she could always pry the information out of Shaggy, should she need to. And, speaking of….

"Ah….. So, you said something about lunch?"

* * *

><p>"<em>bEmyLIfe" Her hands pulled ineffectually at the steel grip on her throat, just tight enough to keep her from screaming for help without letting her pass out from lack of air. She desperately wanted to faint, to escape into what she knew would be a fatal oblivion, but the pinpricks of claws kept jerking her back from the edge of unconsciousness. It didn't want her to sleep. <em>

_Because what fun would that be?_

_It forced her gaze to meet its own, the blackened, shriveled holes set into its torn and twisted face boring into her eyes. There was nothing there. No spark of life. No sheen of emotion or morality. It's eyes were an empty, hungry void, devouring endlessly. Never stopping. Never sated. An unending need that could do nothing but consume, to feed its death with her life. _

_It smiled. _

"Ms. Dinkley?" Velma blinked, and found herself caught in a sudden rush of vertigo. Luckily, she managed to steady herself on the stair's banister. She screwed her eyes shut, forcing herself to both stay upright and not vomit. "Are you alright?"

"…" She tried to talk, but she couldn't forced her tightened throat muscles to relax. It was all she could do to keep breathing. She swallowed, and nearly choked on her own bile. In the ensuing coughing fit, she found herself seated on the steps.

"I'm getting Miss Grimwood," Phantasma's voice was somewhere to her left. It sounded strange without any trace of a giggle. "Sibella, watch her." A flash of cold shot by her.

Velma managed to crack open her eyes. Her blood froze in her veins. _Its gaze was boring into her eyes. _

_There was nothing there._


	3. Chapter 3

So, y'all might be interested to know that I've decided on a whim to completely change the direction, conclusion, and general tone of the story. You guys like horror and comedy, right?

On a different-yet-related note, I've just about doubled the amount of bookmarked webpages I have with wiki pages for this story's research. Doing all this fact-checking and cross-referencing almost makes me feel like I'm doing something with my time. Ha.

**3**

'…_And thus we traveled on. Intentionally seeking those places where the brave dared not tread. Where monsters roamed, and intrigue was in every breath of air and around each darkened corner. On the hunt, chasing down mystery after mystery, bringing light into the shadows of the unknown. Our curiosity was boundless and our friendship forged in dragon's breath, tempered against ghostly claws. The five of us were bound together, and knew we would stay that way for the rest of our lives. The Not-Coward, the Genius, the Romantic, the Engineer, and, of course, Scooby Doo. That day, we became Mystery Inc.'_

Daphne chewed on the end of her pencil, frowning at her notebook. That passage had seemed fitting last week. A good way to end her book. This week, not so much. The beginning was too purple, the end was too final. Sure, it wasn't the final draft and, therefore, it didn't need to be perfect, but it still bothered her. It didn't have the magic. Quite frankly, _she_ felt like she didn't have the magic. That raw, unbridled, nearly indefinable feeling that had always bubbled up in her chest whenever she'd heard Freddie say 'Let's see who you _really_ are!' The moment of truth, and victory, and joy, and….. That feeling, that je ne sais quoi. Her ending didn't have it.

She let out a frustrated sigh through her nose, flipping the notebook shut and pushing away from her desk. She sometimes wondered if all writers were as capricious as she was, and if so, were they also annoyed by it? Granted, she hesitated to think of herself as a real writer yet, since she hadn't had so much as a magazine blurb published. It left her open to a lot of doubts, which she well knew. Would a _real_ writer spend this much time on the ending? Would a _real_ writer struggle like this? Would she ever _be_ a real writer? She knew she'd never be a writer the same way the Fred was a trap master. She'd chosen writing, but traps had chosen him. He had an instinctive know-how that was enhanced by the knowledge he gained, while she was working on knowledge alone.

It was almost enough to make her jealous. Almost.

At the thought of Fred, she checked her watch. Nearly noon. If she hurried, she'd be able to make it to the studio in time to join a certain TV host for lunch. She gathered up her notebook and slipped it into her suitcase, grabbing the high-end luggage and peeking down the hallway out her door. None of her sisters were supposed to be around, but one could never take chances with a gaggle of Blake girls; they had an uncanny ability to catch Daphne in the act of….. Well, _anything_ she wasn't supposed to be doing, really. At least she didn't need to worry about sneaking around her parents this month, as they were vacationing in Canberra. Or was it Sydney?

With a mental shrug, Daphne locked her room and started the three-minute walk to the mansion's front doors.

* * *

><p>"Did you really think no one would figure it out?" Freddie frowned disapprovingly, crossing his arms. "Sure, if it was just me, you might have had a chance," He admitted. "But, there's no way you could get away with it with my friends on the case!" The man in the ridiculous purple and green dinosaur costume, sans mask, glowered sullenly at the blonde, not bothering to respond. Not that he would have been heard over the cheering of children ages 5-13+, anyway. Freddie grinned as a man in a police uniform lead the criminal away, turning back to the audience.<p>

"Well, it looks like we've solved the mystery of the singing, dancing dino!" He gushed with natural enthusiasm. "We gathered the clues, built a trap, and unmasked the monster, together! I couldn't have done it without you, Gang! Because two heads are better than one, and when we _all_ put our heads together, we can accomplish anything!" He opened his arms wide, smiling broadly. "I'm proud of all of you, and I can't wait for our next case! Until then, let's split up, Gang! Goodbye!" Amid the keening goodbyes of the studio audience, Daphne heard the director yell 'Cut!' Freddie let out a huge, exhausted breath and dabbed at his forehead with the end on his ascot, before strolling past the cameras to the stands.

"Hey guys," He greeted the day's random assemblage of children and their keepers. "How'd you like the show?" Said children responded by trying to all squish themselves in as closely as possible to the area he was standing by, a few adventurous souls attempting to climb from the stands, only to be restrained by their parents. Fred laughed a bit at their antics. "Thanks for coming by today, you all did really great. Charlie here," He gestured to a stagehand who sported a rather majestic mustache. "Is going to show you guys where the lunch table is now. I want you all to remember your good detective manners, ok?" With that, Charlie began to direct the slightly less rowdy audience from their seats. Freddie stood off to the side of the procession that could loosely be called a line, shaking hands and giving out high fives. Daphne couldn't help but grin at the way he interacted with children; he'd make a good father one day.

Ok, maybe that was thinking a bit too far ahead.

"So, Detective Jones," She sidled up to him as the last of the audience passed, bumping his arm with her shoulder. "Corrupting yet another group of perfectly wild children into well-mannered, upstanding citizens, huh?" His smile didn't get any wider, which wasn't surprising or disappointing since doing so wouldn't be physically possible, but he still managed to light up all the same at her voice.

"Daph!" As he swept her and her suitcase into his arms, lifting her at least three feet off the ground with no effort, she could not fault his enthusiasm, no matter how lacking his intimacy might be. They were still working on the difference between bro-hugs and romantic-hugs, with this one being caught somewhere in-between, but any hug at all was a marked improvement over his previous convictions that marriage was reserved for people who couldn't stand, let alone stand to touch, each other, and that dating was meant to condition a couple to that point. And that men must never express 'girly' emotions like affection. Ever.

Oh, the things she would give for just five minutes in a locked, camera-less room with a baseball bat and one Mayor Fred Jones Sr.

* * *

><p>"<em>Miserére mei Deum!"<em>

It was….. Noise. A cacophony. Iron nails in a blender. Human nails against cheap china plates. Teeth on a metal file.

She tried to cover her ears, but that only made it worse. Louder. More concentrated. Her useless hands set about digging into her scalp instead, drawing out hair, blood, and skin.

Very possibly there was a terrible wind whipping around her, full of claws and knives that tore at her skin and clothes. Very possibly there was no wind at all and the noise was simply bleeding into her other senses.

The soft, almost pliable bones of a newborn kitten being snapped, one by one. A hand in a garbage disposal. That little _tpth_ of blood vessels bursting in the eyes as you drown.

"_Libera me a malo!"_

And that voice, somewhere amid the wind and claws and Noise. A young woman shrieking in a base, primal panic and fear, the switch between human and animal pushed in the wrong direction.

She stumbled to her feet (had she been sitting in the first place?), heedless of the blood and chunks of skin her fingers were quickly becoming covered with. She only realized she was grinding her teeth together when she felt her jaw catch on the edge of a molar. The tooth failed to hold.

The laugh of a man who had murdered thirteen people. The content sigh of a teenager pushing her grandmother down the stairs. The delighted squeal of a child holding their sibling underwater to see the bubbles. The sizzle of eggs in a frying-pan. Blackbirds cawing. A chain-link fence rattling in the wind. Shoes pounding against cobblestone.

_The mirror shattering from the force of the explosion magical overload in a bubbling caldron a scream muffled by dust and mortar splintering bones from too many arms flesh torn by shrapnel spears of stone and metal pierce a body the fire seeps from below melting skin the life cut strands snapping strands snapping STRANDS SNAPPING STRANDS SNAPPING_ _**STRANDS SNAPPING THE WEB IS BROKEN **_

_**THEY ARE WAKING.**_

"_I. .. Non possum ... Pater, salvifica me! SALVIFICA ME!"_

It stopped.

The wind, the Noise, the claws. All of it stopped.

And Velma realized the screaming voice was her own.

And that she was falling.

* * *

><p><em>Thud<em>

It was surprising how quiet the sound of a body hitting the ground from two stories up could be. Velma barely heard the impact, though she supposed that she might still be a trifle deafened from the Noise. She was certainly numb from it, unless the laws of reality had shifted to dictate that falling no longer hurt. She doubted they had.

She took a moment to rest (which she felt she deserved after going though whatever it was she'd just gone through), gathering what little strength she had, and attempted to roll herself off of her shoulder. Her body failed to respond. She tried a second time, with the same result. An inability to feel, coupled with an inability to move, directly after a long fall was rarely a good sign. In fact, it was usually a very bad sign. She almost wished she felt coherent enough to care.

Stuck on her side as she was, she had little choice but to simply lie there and gaze at the school's wall, eyes tracing over the weather-beaten boards and faded, chipped paint. She wasn't entirely clear on how she'd gone from an interior stair to the far side of the moat around the building, but it was a mystery that she, for once, had no desire to delve into. And that's when it stepped into view.

It walked directly towards her, emerging from the wall of the school without so much as a stirring of dust, as though the wall simply didn't exist. The word hologram came to mind, but Velma dismissed it; this thing _felt_ both more real than the school and less. It was tall. Taller than Shaggy, even, by at least a full foot. It was dark, too. Darker than it should have been, even in the shadow of the school. She couldn't make out a single feature beyond it's general, human-like (but _not_, her few senses screamed, human) shape.

It walked in such a way that the movement of its legs failed to match up precisely with its forward motion, the timing ever so slightly off, and paid no heed to the edge of the moat. It simply continued walking, not even bothering to lower to the water to walk across the surface. It paused only once it had reached her, bending slightly to peer down with a shadowed, featureless face. Somehow, she sensed that it was grinning. It reached out casually and prodded her with one long finger, pushing her onto her back.

Pain exploded throughout her body.

"_Oh yes,"_ It chuckled, its voice like an oil-soaked rag. _"You will work nicely."_

* * *

><p>"…..But, that's my parents for you: free as birds and easily distracted." Daphne shrugged. "At any rate, this is the last bag. We're all set as soon as you're done shooting."<p>

"Yep, I guess we are." The blond added his girlfriend's suitcase to the pile of similarly-colored luggage by his dressing room's wardrobe. Silence stretched on as he smiled cheerily at her. She sighed.

"When will you be done with shooting, Fred?" She prompted, rolling her eyes. One of these days, she would find some way make him understand body language and social cues. And then she would locate the World Tree so they could hide in it while waiting out Ragnarok.

"Oh, tomorrow afternoon, I think?" He thought it over. "At least, if we can keep getting everything in one take. Marten decided to film all my scenes in a row so they'll have all the footage of me they need to finish off the next few episodes while I'm gone." Of course, it wasn't really the producer's decision. Or the director's, for that matter. No, Daphne knew they were rushing to get all of Freddie's scenes filmed because Freddie wanted them to. Mystery Time wouldn't survive should he become unhappy and quit, and everyone knew it.

Well, everyone except the smiling man standing next to her. She had yet to decide if that was a good or bad thing.

"Ok, so you finish shooting, then we have dinner at _The Bloody Stake_," She planned. "Then we leave in the morning - around nine-ish?"

"Sounds good." Freddie nodded, opening the door for her. "Speaking of eating, why don't we go grab a plate from the table before Joe and Charlie get all the good stuff? I'm famished!" She gave him a wry smile.

"A little hard work and suddenly you turn into-" She froze halfway out the door. There was an old, familiar tingle pressing against the back of her neck, making her skin crawl. It raced up her spine, and shot across her shoulder blades. She could feel goose bumps raise along her arms. It caressed the back of her skull, poking through skin and layers of bone. It-

_Tnk_

"Daphne?" She let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, swaying on her feet. Fred steadied her with a hand on her arm, but she hardly noticed him. She turned back to the room, eyes falling on the one piece of luggage she'd purposely set apart from the rest. "What's wrong, Daph?"

She didn't hear him. Shrugging off his hand, Daphne stumbled over to the case, dropping to her knees. Her hands shook as she undid the clasps. Up came the lid, and then the top layers of Styrofoam and padding. She could see, even before the last of the cloth was removed, that her fears were correct. The shape was wrong. Fred peered over her shoulder as she took out the final cloth, revealing a small pile of broken glass.

"I-" Daphne stuttered for a moment. "I need to leave." She got up, nearly running out the door. Fred easily matched her pace, confusion filling his features.

"What's going on, Daphne? What was that?" He paid no mind to the actors and crew who had to step out of the couple's way.

"I need to leave." She repeated firmly, more to herself than to him. "I need to make sure."

"Make sure of what?" The blonde's voice rose as he tried to catch her attention. "Leave to _where?_" She seemed to remember his existence as they reached the doors to the outside.

"Fred." She moved towards him, but stopped short and rested her hands on his chest. "I have something I need to go check on." She looked him in the eye, speaking deliberately. "Stay here, call my satellite phone after you've wrapped up your scenes. I'll arrange for Sylvie to fly you down to Shaggy. Ok?"

"Where are you going?" He pressed, reaching up to grab her hands. She made a mental note to remember to act cryptic and confusing more often. "And why do you need to go there?" She paused.

"I have a…. friend that I need to check up on." Basically the truth, and it would help to put Fred at ease. "I was supposed to visit them earlier, but I completely forgot with Shaggy's letter and everything." She had to fight to keep a straight face; Lying to him may have been necessary, but that didn't mean it was easy. "It's no big deal, really, I just freaked a bit when I realized how upset my friend must be at me for brushing them off." His expression turned slightly suspicious, and she prayed that he wouldn't go into detective mode over this. The man could be uncannily clever when he hit the right mindset. Luckily, he went back to smiling after a moment.

"Don't worry," He dropped her hands to grip her shoulder in a decidedly 'bro' manner. Sigh. "I'm sure your friend will understand. After all, it's just a missed visit, right? Not like it's the end of the world."

"Right. Thanks, Fred." Daphne quickly leaned forward on her tiptoes and placed a small, chaste kiss on his lips. It was a testament to the progress they'd made that he didn't immediately back away, sputter nonsensically, and turn red while looking around to make sure no one had seen them. Rather, he simply did the last two. Still, it was an improvement. She had to remember that. "I'll see you in Louisiana in a few days, alright?"

"Uh, right. Yeah." Freddie stumbled over his words as he tried to compose himself. "I should probably….." He gestured helplessly in the direction they'd come.

"Yeah," If her smile was a little sad around the edges, he didn't notice. "You probably should." She pushed the door to the outside open with one hand and stepped halfway through, turning back to look at him. "Bye, Fred….. I love you." She quickly exited, letting the door slam behind her. With the noise covering her boyfriend's inability to answer, she could pretend he'd echoed her sentiments.

She pulled out her phone and walked towards her Benz, tapping in a call to an old friend.

"Siegfried? It's Daphne Blake. I need a flight, off the record. Yes, as soon as possible." She paused, thinking back to snow and sand and spirits. "How fast can you get me to Tibet?"

* * *

><p>"…but a few minutes….. I think."<p>

Velma's head really, really hurt. A horrendous ache throbbed steadily just behind her eyes, accompanied by a sharp spearing in the area above her right ear. Something was pressing down over the top half of her face.

"Only a…. such a fall? I'd say…"

She shifted slightly, preparing to move, and her shoulder made itself known with a sharp twinge and an unpleasant rush of pressured warmth. She flinched out of reflex, grimacing at the ensuing grinding feeling. She wasn't sure if she'd made a sound of pain or not, but her growing awareness was noticed nonetheless.

"Like, Miss G, I… to wake up."

Whatever was lying across her eyes removed itself, allowing in an almost painfully bright (even with her eyes still closed) light. She _did_ make a sound this time, though it was so pitiful that she was momentarily embarrassed for having made it.

"Ah, lovely." Now that the light had forced Velma into a more alert state, she was able to recognize Miss Grimwood's voice. "Can you hear me, Ms. Dinkley?"

"mmrrmmff" Not the witty repartee Velma had been going for. She forced her eyes open roughly a millimeter.

"Wonderful." The Head Mistress sounded as cheerful and peppy as ever, even if she was impossible to see with the glare that seemed unnecessarily (and maliciously) eye-searing. "You gave us all quite a fright, you know." As fascinating as Velma found Miss Grimwood's overly upbeat yammering, she was really only concerned with one thing at that moment.

"Ghytts." She coughed, finding the action far more painful that it should have been. "Lights. Off."

"Of course, dear. Shaggy, the shade, if you please."

"Uh, like, sure thing." Moments later, the light cut off drastically, bringing Velma instant relief in the form of her eyes no longer trying to explode. She hummed appreciatively in her throat.

Now that the ridiculously bright light had been brought down, Velma blinked a few times, opening her eyes slightly wider on each succession. Her vision was stupidly blurry (but really, what did she expect without her glasses on?), but she was able to make out the general shape of Shaggy's lanky frame and Miss Grimwood's crazy feathered hair.

"Glgh?" Her throat was scratchy and raw for some reason, making it hurt to talk. Luckily, Shaggy had been her friend long enough to be on top of any arising glasses situation.

"Here you go." He said simply, reaching over to the end table and plucking her glasses from it, before slipping them onto her face. "You're on backup number one, since the main pair were, like, cracked." She blinked at his now clear face, slightly amused despite the pain she was in. He'd actually held on to backup number one all these years? She distantly wondered if Fred and Daphne were still holding on to numbers two and three for her.

"What," She had to swallow what little spit was in her mouth to keep her throat from sticking. "happened?" Shaggy immediately looked away sheepishly with an awkward chuckle and Miss Grimwood actually managed to look slightly less cheerful.

"We're not…. Entirely sure." The plump woman admitted. Not a good sign. "From what Phantasma and Sibella told me, you had some kind of panic attack. How much do you remember?"

"Uh…." She remembered being in her newly-assigned room…. Phantasma fetching her….. Something about a memory? Ah, the caverns. For some reason, that night in Honduras had come to her mind. She didn't even realize that her hand had reached up and wrapped around her crucifix. "Vampire?"

"That would be me." A new voice flowed in, gravely sensual. Velma hadn't noticed the presence of another person in the room. She turned her head and felt an old twinge of irritation, which was instantly smothered.

The girl (or woman, rather, as Velma was quite sure no one under the age of eighteen was capable of curves like that) whom had spoken was, quite simply, sex on legs. Of course. God forbid Velma ever felt secure in her appearance without some impossibly hot chick showing up to remind her of everything she lacked in the looks department. Heart-shaped face, cheekbones pronounced just enough to add definition, slightly down-turned nose that somehow made her look more elegant, and large, half-lidded green eyes in an exotic tilt. Not to mention floor-length hair and a hip-bust-waist ratio that put Barbie to shame.

At least Velma could console herself with the fact that the woman's face was weirdly discolored on one side. Probably an unfortunate birthmark.

"After you came to your senses, you looked at me, screamed, then kicked me in the face and ran back up the stairs and threw yourself out a window." Oh. That would be a bruise then. Crap. (Because she kicked someone who didn't deserve it, not because that meant the 'birthmark' would be fading away soon. Certainly not.) At least the woman sounded amused and not angry. "Not that I can blame you."

"Huh?" She'd meant to make an apology, but that last sentence caught her off guard.

"Miss Grimwood mentioned that I'm not the first vampire you've encountered." The woman smiled, her mouth opening just enough to show the edges of her fangs. "I know some of my kind can leave, well, quite the lasting impression on a human; it's no surprise that you'd panic upon seeing another one." She shifted minutely, and a little bit of light reflecting off of the cross dangling down near the bottom of her purple dress's scooped neckline, drawing Velma's attention to it. A vampire with a cross necklace?

Oh. _Oh._

"Sibella, I presume?" Had to be. If there was more than one female vampire with a cross necklace wondering around here, she was done. Luckily, the vampire's smile widened, eyes glinting as she nodded.

"Ms. Dinkley." Sibella returned politely. Ok, Velma could handle this. Inhuman gorgeousness aside, the vampire seemed friendly enough. Well mannered, not trying to eat her, apparently very forgiving about blows to the face. And, really, she was the first person Velma had met today who didn't spout off horrible- "It's just _fangtastic_ to meet you."

Oh Goddammit.


	4. Chapter 4

Whoops, been a while. I got a bit distracted with another, more pony-centric story I'm writing. It's about Derpy Hooves, you should check it out.

Anyway, some quick answers to some questions:

FrostShadowStar - Worry not. As I said before, I'll be throwing references and nods to all kinds of stuff, regardless of how canon they are to this story.

Annnnd, turns out that was the only real question (more of a suggestion, really) anyone asked (made, rather). In other news, this site apparently can't handle pagebreaks anymore. So, on that note, enjoy.

**4**

She pulled her heavy cloak tighter around herself as the wind kicked back up, sending ice shards disguised as snowflakes whipping about. It was blizzard season, it was _always_ blizzard season here, and a storm was brewing, and brewing quickly. Looking up, she could see that getting to shelter before the worst of the wind and snow hit wouldn't be a problem, though she wasn't sure about getting _out_ once her business was concluded.

A particularly strong gust arose, and she quickly slammed her pick into the stone and ice in front of her before she could be blown off course. Just a few feet to either the left or right would find her with nothing beneath her but open air and a long, decidedly deadly drop. This high up, these gusts were common, and only growing more so as the weather worsened.

_Just a little further... slow and steady..._

She should have brought someone with her. A guide, or hired hand, or even a young con-artist in a yellow track-suit would have been better than taking this path alone. Eddie would call it in if she didn't make it back to the plane, but it would be far too late by then if she fell. Then again, she didn't really have too many options; she hadn't heard from the kid for years and none of the locals would venture to the castle for any price. And Eddie could be counted on to fly, but nothing beyond that.

_Careful there, girl... Wouldn't want to need a visit to Daisy..._

She inched forward carefully, making sure the ground was solid under her foot before shifting her weight to it; the last thing she needed was to step into a hidden pitfall or a crumbly patch of stone. It was just a few more yards now, and she'd be at the gate. If she could make it that far, she'd be safe - at least from the elements.

She looked up at the castle looming in front of her. Despite its massive size, she could barely make out the grey of the stone and mortar against the white of the snow around her. It seemed so much bigger than she remembered, and she wondered how she was possibly going to find what she was looking for before she missed her deadline to return.

Well, with any luck, what she was looking for would find _her._

She trudged forwards and upwards, and nearly fell on her face as the wind she was pushing against abruptly cut off. With a surprised blink, she realized that she'd made it into the boulder-lined alcove before the gate. The air here was almost unnaturally still, at total odds with the slicing frenzy of ice and air just feet away. No snow piled here, the paved rock bare and pristine. Even the ice that she shook from her cloak and hood evaporated quickly as it lay on the ground, not even leaving puddles behind.

The ancient arch of the gate didn't look as such, standing as strong and imposing as the day it had been built, whenever that had been. The iron portcullis was raised and the thick wooden gate itself was raised along with it, just high enough for someone of her height to pass through without ducking. It was a touch of irony that the sudden, unshakable feeling that she was being welcomed... wasn't inviting.

Still, it was better than the alternative: A closed, immovable gate and no choice but to return to the stirring Tibetan blizzard. As she stepped through the gate, the howling wind dropped to a whispering breeze. Looking back, she could see the snow being driven with a fury beyond the boulders. From somewhere deep within the castle, she heard a great, monstrous groan that reverberated off and around the stone, sinking into her chest and shaking her bones.

Maybe the blizzard wasn't such a bad choice after all...

The gate slid closed behind her, the portcullis rattling down with it.

Or she could stay inside and keep looking around, that worked too.

She reached up and pulled her hood back to improve her vision; without the wind, she hardly needed it up anyway. The castle was truly a castle in the classic function, its walls stretching around far more than the main fortress. In fact, the village at the base of the mountain could have easily fit within the walls, even with all the structures already there. Finding anything would be a lot easier if she had a Great Dane with her to sniff out some clues.

She counted at least seven stone houses, with possibly more out of her sight, a large well, two separate stables, what appeared to be a blacksmith's shop (if the anvil was anything to go by), an assortment of bare vendor stalls, what looked like a small playing field or training area, and a dozen other things that, with the lack of people, made the whole place seem lifeless. More like a crypt than a town.

Something moved.

She held in a shriek as a white and brown mottled owl landed not three feet from her, perching on a long-dead torch that was planted into the ground. It regarded her for a moment with its yellow eyes, head cocked to the side, before raising its foot and picking at one of the claws.

She didn't know very much about owls, but it seemed odd to her that one should land so close to a person and not seem even slightly on edge. Then again, she wasn't an expert on reading owls' emotions, either. What she _did_ know, however, was that this owl was the only living thing she'd seen since she'd left the village, which made it quite curious.

"Just what are you doing out here?" She asked the bird. It gave her a look that very plainly called her crazy for talking to owls and ruffled up its feathers, hooting once. That done, it silently lifted from its perch and rose into the air, flapping just enough to carry itself to the top of the nearest building, whereupon it perched and stared down at her. Raising an eyebrow, she followed after it, coming to a stop at the base of the building.

It rose and flew to the next building down, turning to watch her once more. She waited for a moment, not quite sure if she was merely spooking the bird. It hooted at her again and flew back to the building she stood by, then turned around and went to the next building again, looking at her expectantly. She followed.

It wasn't exactly a Great Dane, but it would do.

*pagebreak*

Despite Shaggy's protests, Velma was up and about. Or, up, at least. Moving around was proving to be a challenge with the way her head was trying to implode. Though, honestly, that she had managed to throw herself through a second-story window and avoided breaking anything was nothing short of a miracle and, in light of that, she wasn't going to be complaining about a little headache.

"Auugh, my heaaaaaad..." Much. She'd entertained hopes that Miss Grimwood would be able to magic up some kind of aspirin spell, but, apparently, healing had never been the Headmistress's forte.

"Why not just lay back down and rest, huh?" Shaggy urged her gently, steadying her with one hand as she started to lean too far forward. "Give the 'ol noodle a chance to, like, warm up." A look of distraction ghosted across his face for a moment as he thought about noodles, but the concern returned as Velma waved his hand away.

"Last year, I fell into a rock quarry and broke my leg and I had to drag myself out _and_ back to town." She said flatly. "I can handle a little bump on the head." Bravado aside, she moved as little as she could possibly manage.

"I really must agree with Shaggy." Miss Grimwood added. "The school is no quarry and you are not on your own. You should at least allow me to have someone who knows a thing or two about the workings of the human body look over you, in case you have injuries that I missed." Velma couldn't really fight the logic in that, much as she wanted to.

Really, Velma felt that this whole experience had gone wrong from the start. She'd spent four years chasing after real ghouls and ghosts, while the rest of the gang had gone into the mundane. She'd rather entertained ideas that _she_ would be the worldly one in the group now. That she'd waltz in, snap her fingers, and reveal whatever had Shaggy so upset to be little more than a wily old man with too much time on his hands. But, no. Of course not.

Not only had it turned out that Shaggy now had more experience with monsters and the supernatural in his little finger than she did in her whole body, but she'd discovered that she was _horrible_ at dealing with said monsters. It felt completely unfair to her that she should be blacking out and having panic attacks while _Shaggy,_ of all people, rubbed elbows with werewolves and vampires and ghosts and who knows what else without so much as blinking.

Still, that was no excuse for being stupid with her health.

"Yeah, ok." Velma let herself lean back against the headboard of the bed. "I'll wait to get up until the school nurse or whoever signs off on it." A thought suddenly occurred to her. "Uh, you do have some sort of nurse or doctor here, don't you?"

"Of some sort, yes." Miss Grimwood instantaneously reverted to her usual pomp. "No official training, but she certainly knows more than enough about what makes a human tick to act as your nurse for today, I'm sure." She turned to the door, raising her voice. "Since you are all listening at the door anyway, could you come in here please, Elsa?" This was met with some muffled, embarrassed-sounding tittering.

The door swung open, revealing not only Winnie, Phantasma, and Sibella, but also what appeared to be an Egyptian mummy. Velma did not notice them, however, as her attention was caught by what walked into the room: a woman who looked to be around Sibella's age, but built entirely differently. Where Sibella was curvy and busty, this woman was over six and a half feet of solid muscle, with no chest to speak of. Her face was square, with large, blocky features that were set apart from each other in such a way as to give her the look of an old-fashioned doll. Her clothes were strictly functional, a form-fitting shirt and slacks that were ripped in several places to allow her bulging biceps and calves free movement, and her hair was a wild tangle of black and white that stood almost entirely straight up, making her taller than even Shaggy.

Also, she seemed to be made from the pieces of dozens of stitched together corpses, with a huge steel bolt protruding from either side of her neck. A vampire, a werewolf, a ghost (or phantom, if there was a major difference), and now one of Frankenstein's monsters. Apparently, the school was attempting to collect the whole set.

"There's a pun here," Velma muttered to herself, a touch proud that she felt nothing but a weary sense of vague annoyance at Elsa's appearance. "But I really hope no one figures it out."

"Ah, very good." The Headmistress waved the golem over. "Velma, this is Elsa Frankenteen, daughter of the famous Frankenteen Sr. Elsa, this is Velma Dinkley, a dear friend of Coach Shaggy. She seems to have come through her fall without any serious injury, but could you check her over to be sure, dear?"

"No problem!" Velma flinched instinctively; Elsa did not have a voice that inspired confidence in her intelligence. Quite the opposite, really.

"Uh, I'm not so sure about this..." The bespectacled woman leaned away as Elsa cracked her knuckles loudly.

"Like, don't worry, Velma." Shaggy smiled reassuringly. "Elsa's patched me up, like, more than once. She knows what she's doing." He blinked, a flash of discomfort crossing his face. "Uh, mostly." Velma did not find this comforting.

"You're in very capable hands." Miss Grimwood agreed. "Now, Shaggy and I shall step out so you might have a bit of privacy, hm?" Velma was suddenly sorely tempted to grab Shaggy's arm so he wouldn't leave her alone with her 'nurse', but she forced down the urge as he and the Headmistress made themselves scarce.

"Nice to meet you." Elsa boomed, which did nothing good for Velma's headache.

"L-likewise..." The bespectacled woman did her best to be friendly, but her voice was strained with pain and annoyance. There was a brief stretch of silence as they stared at each other. "So..."

"So, let's get started." Else sat herself by the bed, in the chair Shaggy had vacated. "Fish, waffle, Monday."

"Er, what?" Velma blinked.

"Just remember those." Elsa gabbed her wrist, feeling for her pulse. "Any chronic health problems I should know about?" Velma felt herself relax slightly; this, at least, sounded like a proper medical examination.

"I had asthma when I was younger, but I grew out of it years ago."

"Any recent injuries?" Elsa hummed and nodded, letting go of Velma's wrist. "Pulse is good, steady."

"Just the usual scrapes and abrasions from outdooring. Broke my leg last year, but it wasn't a bad break and it's been fully healed for about three months."

"And how do you feel now?" Elsa peered down at her. Velma was surprised by how intricate the stitches running across the golem's forehead were. Rather than repulsive, they were actually a little pretty, not incredibly removed from an Indian henna.

"Well, my shoulder's felt better," Velma admitted. "And my head is killing me. Got anything for that?"

"Let me have a look." Elsa lightly gripped Velma's arm and raised it slightly. "Any pain?" She asked, slowly rotating the limb this way and that.

"Only a little."

"How about now?" The muscular woman lifted her arm higher, and Velma felt a _click_ in her shoulder.

"Whoa, tingly. That's not right." Elsa immediately lowered her arm again.

"Wiggle your fingers." Velma did so, though it was slightly difficult and the tingling remained, which she told her nurse. "Probably a pinched nerve." Elsa concluded. "How bad is your head?"

"Like a grenade went off in my brain." Velma did her best not to flinch as Elsa's gigantic hands placed themselves on either side of her face.

"Look up." Velma did, and the giant hands spread their equally giant fingers to feel the sides of her neck. "And left. And right. Now back to center and down. Left. Right."

"Ah!" Velma hissed at the sudden spike of pain shooting between her left shoulder and her neck.

"Yeah, pinched nerve." Elsa's hands wrapped around Velma's neck, feeling carefully along the contours of her spine. This made Velma very nervous. "Feels like your upper vertebrae are in still where they should be, no slipped discs. Little bit of inflammation, though." She took her hands back. "You probably jarred your spine when you fell, and the inflammation is putting pressure on one or more of your nerves. A little bit of ice and you should be feel a whole lot better."

"Oh." Velma reached up to feel the back of her neck. "Huh. So, it's safe for me to move around?"

"Uh-uh." Elsa nodded. "Just take it easy for a while. By the way, what were those three words I told you to remember?"

"Uh..." Velma thought for a moment. "Fish, Monday, and waffle."

"Probably no concussion, then." Elsa nodded.

"Awesome." Velma pulled back the covers and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. "This place is way too intriguing to waste my time in a bed." She paused, looking down. "...Where are my shorts?"

After sorting out her state of undress (which, she supposed, was only prudent. They'd needed to make sure she wasn't injured, after all.), Velma followed Elsa to the kitchen in a quest for ice. Much like the rest of the school, it was covered in cobwebs and dust and smelled slightly of disused decay. Hardly ideal conditions for preparing food. The ice was ok, though, so Velma wrapped some in a dusty towel and held it against her neck. She was almost surprised by the incongruity of a building without any sort of phone-lines or apparent electricity having a running fridge, but she recalled that Shaggy had indeed been living there. He always found a way.

Where everyone else had gotten to, Velma didn't know. She could barely make out Phantasma's shrieking laughter in some other part of the mansion, but there was no indication beyond that to even hint that there was anyone else in the building. Velma was just fine with that, as her headache would not welcome much company, no matter how fascinating. Besides, she had a walking, talking animated amalgamation of corpses right there with her; more than enough for her inner researcher to feast upon.

"So, how'd you get so good at medicine?" She asked, sitting on a stool by the counter. "There doesn't seem to be an abundance of humans around to practice on." Really, Velma was only mildly curious about this, but it felt rude to just ask something like 'What's it like to be a living corpse?'

"Comes with the territory." Elsa shrugged. "A body like this takes a lot of upkeep." Velma absorbed that thought for a moment, marveling at how easily the topic turned exactly where she wanted it to.

"So, your, uh, parts don't grow?" She'd always wondered that about Frankenstein's monster.

"Most of them do," Elsa explained. "But bits and pieces die off every once in a while, or don't grow right, so I gotta know how to replace 'em. Plus, I need to know this stuff if I ever wanna make kids of my own someday." Velma decided she should change the subject. While all this was very interesting, the implication was that Elsa wasn't... functional down there, and Velma felt uncomfortable asking about such a personal matter. (Apparently, asking about the growth of one's undead flesh wasn't personal.)

"What's it like here at the school, then?" It was almost refreshing to Velma, reminding herself of her complete lack of social grace. "It's year-round, right?"

"Yeah." Elsa leaned against the counter, somehow managing to keep her legs and hips completely straight. "It's great here! We're all really good friends and Miss Grimwood and Coach Shaggy teach us everything we'll need to know for when we go out and join our dadas." Velma did her best not to laugh at the idea of Shaggy teaching anyone anything other than eating and running. (Also: the fact that the woman who just diagnosed her pinched nerve still called her father 'dada'.)

"Shaggy was never much of a teacher back when we ran around in the Mystery Machine." Perhaps it was just the warmth of nostalgia, but Velma felt that her headache was already starting to recede. "He could cook, run, eat, and watch bad movies." (Well, that and make bad puns, but Velma really didn't want to bring those up again if she could help it.)

"He still does all those." Elsa laughed. "He even drives us into town once a month to see a midnight movie at the theater." For some reason, Velma found the idea of Shaggy in a movie theater with four (well, five if you counted the mummy) schoolgirls in the middle of the night to be less humorous. Not that she doubted _his_ intentions, of course...

"How's Shaggy adjusted to all this, anyway?" She asked. "The idea that he's managed to spend the last four years in a house of monsters, ah, no offense, is pretty hard to take." Elsa laughed again.

"He took a couple weeks to adjust the first time he taught us, but he got used to things pretty fast." The large woman explained. "He left and went back to you guys, but when he came back it was like fitting a piece into a puzzle. I think the Coach needs us as much as we need him."

"Huh, I never would have guessed..." Velma felt a tiny sting of wistful sadness at Shaggy's apparent personal growth, though she supposed feeling such a thing was selfish. She couldn't really have expected her friend to hold himself in a stasis until she came back into his life, but she wished she hadn't missed out on seeing the changes happen herself. She hoped that Daphne and Freddie hadn't undergone such drastic changes without her as well.

"Well, he's not exactly a 'normal' person," Elsa cut into Velma's thoughts. "Even to us ghouls. I think that's one of the reasons we all got so attached to him so fast." The bespectacled woman had to smile.

"Yeah, he's always had a certain off-the-wall, goofy charm." She agreed. It was actually quite nice, talking with Elsa. Fascination with the undead aside, Velma had been playing lone wolf for most of the last four years, and had only just realized how much she missed the near-constant chatter of the Gang. "Speaking of Mr. Charming, where did he sneak off to, anyway? For that matter, where's _everyone_ snuck off to?"Elsa took a moment to think about it.

"Miss Grimwood probably had everyone go to their rooms to give you some space," She said. "Which means Phantasma and Sibella are gossiping in the crypt, Winnie is probably running around outside, and Tanis is in her room."

"And Shaggy?"

"I believe," Miss Grimwood suddenly appeared in the doorway. "Tanis requested that he help her with something. I trust the fact that you are out of your room means you are feeling much better, dear?"

"Getting there." Velma nodded, shifting the towel of ice for a moment so the Headmistress could see it. "Elsa's just been telling me a bit about how things work around here."

"Wonderful." Miss Grimwood smiled, walking to the fridge. "Perhaps we could continue that conversation over a late lunch, if you're up to it? In all the excitement, it seems all of us neglected to eat." It was then that Velma's stomach decided to remember that it both existed and was very empty.

"That sounds like a good plan." Velma nodded. She wondered if Sibella, Phantasma, and the mummy (Tanis, she assumed) would be joining them for the meal. Her experience and common sense told her that ghosts and mummies didn't eat, and that vampires lived off of blood, but she didn't want to make any more assumptions about the workings of monsters at this point.

"Alright, then." Miss Grimwood turned to Elsa. "Go round up Sibella and Phantasma and see if the three of you can't find Matches so we can get the food from lunch reheated. Velma, would you be so kind as to fetch Shaggy and Tanis?" She pointed to a small door off to the side that Velma hadn't noticed before. "Just go down and you can't miss Tanis's room."

"Uh, sure." Velma put the ice down, glad to find that the pain in her shoulder and head was down to manageable levels.

The door, as it turned out, opened to a small stairwell, leading down. The wooden steps were lit by old, hanging lanterns every few yards, leaving small patches of darkness between them. At least there was a handrail. Velma gripped it and carefully descended.

After about forty full seconds of walking downwards, Velma began to wonder just how far the steps went. There was a slight curve to the stairwell that kept her from seeing more than two or three lanterns ahead, which also meant she had no idea when she would reach the end. She had to be at least as far down as the house was tall, on the outside, that is.

Pondering this, and getting just the slightest bit unnerved with the sound of her shoes clacking against the wood, Velma realized that she could suddenly smell smoke. In the same instant, the handrail abruptly ended, which momentarily threatened to throw her off balance. She took a moment to regain her bearings, placing her hand on the wall for support, and realized that the walls were not the wooden walls of the school, but a rough, cold stone. She turned to look back up the staircase to see if she could spot where the change had occurred, but all the lanterns she had passed were now out, leaving nothing for her to see but pitch-black darkness.

"The house is just messing with me now, isn't it?" She muttered to herself in a slightly cross manner. "Whatever. Nowhere to go but down." She turned and continued following the stairs, noting, but not acknowledging, that the steps too had gone from wood to stone. The next lantern that appeared was not a lantern, but a torch set into the wall (which explained why she was smelling smoke, at least.)

Velma was quite grateful when the stairs finally ended, leading to a small landing made of the same rough stone blocks as the walls and stairs. Her headache was starting to get worse again, and her shoulder was feeling sensitive from the constant motion on the stairs. Feeling a bit annoyed at Miss Grimwood for sending her down here, she too a deep,slow breath and pressed on.

The landing ended in a small stone arch, which led to a stone corridor, which led to a larger arch. Velma was getting a distinct impression that the whole thing was a Mobius strip, but was proven wrong as she continued on.

"Huh." She was torn between exasperation and fascination as she found herself standing in an ancient Egyptian tomb. The room was huge, lit by torches and braziers, and filled with large statues of the Egyptian gods Set, Neith, and Sobek and stone tablets covered in hieroglyphics. From her brief studies in ancient Egyptian culture, Velma was able to identify the many jars that littered the area as being made for storing organs. She rather didn't want to find out if they were fulfilling their purpose. Piles of gold and and trinkets were spread around the room, mixed liberally with the omnipresent sand. Velma wondered to herself whether or not, should she break through a wall and dig straight up, she would find herself in Egypt or Louisiana.

In the center of the room, there sat a huge sarcophagus atop a stone dais. Velma wasn't an expert on hieroglyphics, but the illustrations adorning the casket seemed to depict a scholar, or priest, maybe, under the sway of a Pharaoh whose face was obscured by a black cloud. She was unsure what the next few pictures meant, but the priest/scholar seemed to become ill or unstable somehow, ending in his death. The next images depicted a room that was obviously the very tomb Velma was standing in, being filled with the dead scholar/priest, his possessions, and a young girl, presumably his daughter (or wife, Velma thought. The Egyptians didn't really mind young brides, what with the shorter life span back then.) Something about the whole thing struck her as odd, and her eyes went back to the black Pharaoh. She felt a niggling in the back of her mind as she looked at it, making her headache spike.

"Umph!" Velma was snapped out of her impromptu researching by a small, high-pitched grunt. It sounded as though it had come from the other side of the sarcophagus. "Give me a little more..." It sounded like a teenage girl. Cautiously, as well as suspiciously, Velma began to silently round the casket.

"Like, I don't think I can!" Came Shaggy's voice, strained with exertion. "It's way too, urrgh, tight! Any more and I might, like, hurt you." Velma very nearly froze in scandalized horror, but forced herself to keep creeping.

"I can, auugh, take it, Coach!" The girl's voice (presumably Tanis) whimpered. "Just give me everything you can..." The bespectacled woman had to bite her knuckle to keep from giving away her presence.

Velma surreptitiously peeked around the corner, cheeks blazing red and eyes narrowed. Tanis stood just in front of her, eyes closed. Judging from her size and general body shape, Velma guessed she couldn't be more than fourteen (or would that be two-thousand and fourteen?) She was covered from head to toe in white wrappings, except for the strip around her eyes, with a space on either side of her head allowing short, straight black hair to spill out. Despite the fact that she was totally covered, her wrappings extended around the top of her legs in a sort of miniskirt (but, after the werewolf in jogging shorts, Velma wasn't going to question a mummy in a wrapping miniskirt.)

Shaggy stood beside Tanis, pulling mightily on a strip of wrapping.

"Like, how's, hmmph, this?" He handed the taut cloth to Tanis, who sucked in a breath and pulled it around her stomach.

"Nnng... Got it!" The mummy relaxed, letting go of the now-connected wrapping. "Thanks, Coach!" She quickly turned and gave Shaggy a hug.

"Like, don't mention it." The tall man laughed, returning the embrace. "Just maybe, like, ask your mummy to send you some extra wrapping. You're growing way too fast to, like, keep wearing what you have."

"I know!" Tanis agreed. "It's so embarrassing wearing these old rags. If the other girls found out I can't hardly fit in these anymore, I'd just die!"

Velma, having managed to regain her composure, quickly retreated to the front of the sarcophagus before she could be seen.

"Hello?" She called. "Anyone in here?"

"Like, that you, Velma?" Shaggy came around the dais. "Guess that means Elsa gave you a clean bill of health, huh?"

"Yep. Miss Grimwood sent me down here to tell you and Tanis that it's time for lunch."

"Groovy! I'm, like, starving!" Shaggy placed a hand on his stomach. "I haven't eaten since my pre-lunch snack!"

"Nice to know you're still a bottomless pit on legs." Velma snarked lightheartedly. She then noticed Tanis shyly peeking from around the sarcophagus. "Hey there, you must be Tanis." Tanis ducked back out of sight for a moment, before shuffling timidly out into view.

"Hi..." She mumbled. Velma smiled; the kid was certainly adorable for a thousands of years old corpse.

"Hi." She returned. "I'm Velma. Nice to meet you." Tanis just nodded in response, shifting slightly behind Shaggy. "Ok, then..." Bashful, this mummy. Perhaps she was embarrassed by almost being caught unwrapped, so to speak. "Let's go eat." Velma spun on her heel and marched away from the awkwardness, into the corridor.

It was then she remembered the stairs.

Oh, she was not looking forward to the coming climb...

*pagebreak*

She huffed tiredly at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wall. Of course, _of__ course_ the owl would lead her up the very tallest tower in the castle. Catching her breath, she stepped into the room.

Dusty, cold, dark. A long-dead fireplace was nestled in the corner. The bookshelf was completely in order. Aside from the perch upon which the owl now sat, nothing in this place had seen life for quite some time.

And yet, the cauldron was bubbling.

She approached it slowly. The liquid inside was a sickly green, thick and smelling of decay. The air around it seemed to shimmer, like a soap-bubble barrier. She reached out and popped it.

The liquid reacted instantly, quivering furiously and rising. It pulled itself into the air, twisting and bubbling as it defied gravity. The owl gave a startled hoot and flew out the window. She took a step back as a shape began to form.

There before her, floating above the cauldron, was the green, transparent head of Vincent Van Ghoul.

"Hello again, Ms. Blake." He said. "If you are speaking with this sending, it may already be too late."


	5. Chapter 5

Man, have I had some crazy writer's block. Anyway, have some answers to some questions:

Yes, Velma and Daphne are going to be meeting up, probably within just a few chapters. No, Shaggy won't be doing magic. He's already some kind of speedy ubermensch who outruns werewolves and and vampires all day, he don't need no _steenking_ magics. No, Scrappy will most probably not show up, except as a side reference or something. I have difficulty seeing him as anything other than a hyperactive puppy, which doesn't fit in the story since he should have grown up by now. Elsa's name is stated in the movie to be Elsa Frankenteen, and her father is explicitly stated to be called Frankenteen Sr. Apart from the similar look and names, they don't seem to be connected to Dr. Frankenstein or his monster (who, yes, was named Adam). This was likely due to some matter of copyright law, or wanting to distance themselves from Universal's Frankenstein, but that's the canon and I'm running with it.

If any of you have questions, comments, or just random guesses as to the plot, please feel free to click the review button and leave me a message. :)

**5**

"Too late?" Daphne slowly approached the floating, semi-transparent image. "Too late for what? Did someone open the Chest of Demons?"

"Magical wards around the chest indicate that it has not been opened. I left this sending for you to find because I have embarked on a more dire errand. It cannot answer your questions, only impart the words I have left."

"Oh." The redhead muttered to herself. "Like a tape recording, then."

"Mmyes," The sending intoned smarmily. "Like a tape recording." Daphne frowned in annoyance.

"Wait just one second, I thought you said you can't respond to me!" She accused.

"It can't." The head explained. "It just so happens that you're incredibly predictable."

"Very funny, Van Ghoul. Was there a reason for this, or- oh, why am I even talking to this thing?" Daphne rubbed her forehead with the back of her glove.

"Why, indeed? Pleasantries aside," The visage of Van Ghoul suddenly turned serious. "I am most likely dead, or worse." Daphne opened her mouth in surprise, but the sending continued without letting her respond. "The spell to contact you was set to trigger should I be gone for more than a week. Assuming you flew down by private plane immediately upon receiving my summons, it has now been eight days since I entered the Dream Realm."

"What's the-" The heiress began.

"The Dream Realm is, and is not. It is a place between worlds, immaterial yet binding. Few mortals have walked its lands, fewer have survived. Currently, it is a staging area for an invasion that would crush humankind underneath its uncaring heel."

"An inva-"

"Yes, an invasion." The image nodded grimly. "There are things beyond the world beyond. Dark, formless things that breathe the eons and whisper epochs. Most of them hardly know what a human is, much less care. All they want is _in_. Imagine that all of reality is a house with countless rooms. In the smallest corner of the basement, there is a small hole, leading to the nest of a mouse. That nest is our dimension. Until recently, we were completely overlooked as the things ruled their house, but we've been brought to their attention. Someone wanted the cheese, and now the owners of the house realize there is yet one tiny scrap of real estate they haven't filled."

"So these things want to get rid of their mouse problem?" Daphne asked quickly.

"No, no, no..." The sending tsked. "If the universe is a mouse's nest, humanity is less than a single dust mite, clinging to life within a mote on the end of a frayed bit of string. As I said, they want _in_, current tenants be damned. Luckily for us, they're presently unable to reach our world. Our, at least, they were.

"Something changed. A witch made a bid for power, and one of the things answered. A great web was begun with this witch's help, a web that would bridge the Dream Realm with ours. From there, the most ancient and terrible of things could enter. However, the witch was consumed by her own power, and the anchor of the web was broken. Until now.

"The anchor is again in place, somewhere on Earth. I have entered the Dream Realm in an attempt to find and follow the strands so that they may be severed. However, by now, it is no longer wise to assume I'm capable of this task, or even alive. It's now up to you, along with Shaggy and Scooby, to find the anchor on Earth and destroy it."

"_Us?_" Daphne furrowed her brow. "Why us? And how?"

"Because fate, as you will come to find, is quite choosey about her champions. If you've already been picked by her, to seal away a chest of ghosts and demons, for example, there is little chance she'll let you sit around while the universe crumbles. As for how... Something tells me it will become clear with time."

"What, that's it?" Daphne shook her head in exasperation. "Find some_thing,_ some_where,_ some_how_?"

"Not a promising amount of information, is it?" The sending said sympathetically. "I suggest you start by traveling to Louisiana, to a place called the Barren Bog, and see what you can dig up about the late Witch of the Web."

"Louisiana?" Daphne paused, thinking to herself. "At least I won't have to go far after meeting up with the rest of the gang."

"One more thing." The head continued, glancing towards the window. Daphne followed its gaze and saw that the owl was perched upon the sill. "Take Nivicolum with you; she has an ear, so to speak, for unusual magics." The owl responded with a dismissive hoot and went back to preening its feathers. "Even if her attitude towards humans leaves something to be desired."

"That can't be everything!" The redhead protested. "You haven't even told me what I'm up against! How much time do I have? What if I can't find anything about this witch?"

"I've told you all that I can, the rest is up to you." The sending said with finality. "If you touch the cauldron, this sending will repeat its message." With that, the glowing green image of Vincent Van Ghoul blinked out of existence, leaving Daphne in the dark.

* * *

><p>Velma wasn't sure if she should be annoyed or relieved when the ascent to the kitchen took little more than fifteen seconds. On one hand, the lack of climbing was much appreciated by her neck and shoulder. On the other, she was seriously starting to hate this house and its shifting geometry. Even with magic in the equation, trying to wrap her brain around how it all worked was making her headache roar back into being. (Really, now, was it some kind of teleportation that that linked two separate locations or was it a simple matter of the stair stretching? If it was the latter, <em>why<em> would anyone spell a stairway with only one door on each end to lengthen and shorten at random? If the former, why the stretching at all?)

Shaggy ambled along behind her, Tanis still sticking closely to his side. Velma got the sense that the little undead girl felt a bit threatened by her presence. She was likely just wary about the chance that her beloved teacher might decide to go off and start hunting mysteries again now that Velma was around, which, to be fair, was hardly an unfounded fear. In fact, it was an outcome that some part of Velma had (perhaps selfishly and foolishly) been hoping for in the back of her mind.

"So, like, what's on the menu, Miss G?" Shaggy craned his long neck to and fro, searching the immediate area for scraps of food.

"Winnie prepared a rather malodorous Slimewart Stew," The headmistress explained. "But I'm afraid we'll have to wait to eat until the girls find Matches." Velma was a bit surprised that matches were proving so hard to find that Grimwood was still waiting to get some. Though, it was no more surprising than the idea that the headmistress didn't know any spells or cantrips for a small flame. (At least, she assumed not, since the stove was still unlit.)

"Like, did anyone check the bog?" Shaggy asked offhandedly, heading towards the door. "They've been running around out there a lot lately." Velma did a mental double take. The matches were doing what now? Quite obviously, she was missing a piece of the puzzle here. She followed along as her tall friend made his way outside and stood on the drawbridge. As he brought his fingers to his mouth, she knew well enough to cover her ears.

_Fweeeeeeeet!_

Velma shook off the sudden, bizarre pang of d_éjà vu_ and lowered her hands, peering out towards the bog. It only took a moment for the whistle to be answered by a raspy, rumbling howl in the distance.

"Uh, what was that?" The bespectacled woman asked, only a touch of worry around the edges of her voice. Whatever it was, it sounded both large and ill-tempered. Shaggy smiled.

"That's Matches." He explained ambiguously. Velma tapped down the slight surge of annoyance that resulted, instead focusing on the shape that was dashing towards them rather quickly. A large quadruped, around Velma's height if it stood on its hind legs, with short brown fur, dotted with black spots. Big, floppy ears, and a bright pink tongue lolling out of its open mouth. A faded blue collar with a glittering gold charm.

"Scooby!" The only thing that kept Velma from being bowled over by the Great Dane was Shaggy stepping forward and snagging the dog's collar as he reared up.

"Relma!" Scooby exclaimed, struggling to get past Shaggy. "It's Relma, Raggy! Relma! Relma!" The dog yipped, quite beside himself, before degenerating into wordless barking.

"Like, I know, Scoob!" Shaggy kept one hand firmly attached to his best friend's collar, the other wrapping around the dog's chest as they struggled with each other. "Like, cool it, huh? Velma isn't exactly, like, feeling too good right now; don't go jumping all over her, okay?"

"Long time, no see, Scooby Doo." Velma held out her palm to the excited hound, who licked it vigorously, front legs kicking in the air. After a few moments, he managed to gain a bit of control over himself, and Shaggy let him go. Scooby nipped at her fingers affectionately, the force of his wagging tail causing his back legs to shuffle from side to side. "I really missed you, you know."

"Aw," The Great Dane rubbed the top of his head against her leg. "Rye rissed you too." Quite staunchly ignoring the mistiness building up in her eyes, Velma crouched down and wrapped her good arm around Scooby's neck, hugging him carefully. Up close, she was slightly saddened to see the first signs of aging on the dog's face, but she forced herself not to dwell on time lost. He still had plenty of years left in him.

She looked up at the sound of another creature making its way towards them from the bog. It stood on its four legs (the front pair of which seemed to end in webbed feet, oddly enough) at approximately the height of a small horse, though it was at least twice that long. Most of that length came from its sinewy, thin neck and its whipping, spade-headed tail. It was covered oblong head to clawed toe in light green scales, with darker patches creating a mottled pattern along its sides. Atop its head, between the two curved, dark horns, grew a shaggy patch of mane that traveled along its spine to its back, whereupon the hair gave way to stiff, triangular spines. Smoke trailed from its nostrils, its mouth was filled with jagged teeth, and its eyes were red and orange.

"Oh, hey Matches." Shaggy greeted the dragon (Dragon!) casually, giving a lazy wave. "Miss G was, like, looking for you." He patted his stomach. "Lunch time."

"Runch?" Scooby's head shot up, pulling from Velma's hug. "Oh boy!" Velma tried not to feel put out when he launched himself towards the kitchen, seemingly forgetting about her. Apparently, Scooby's aging was only superficial. Shaggy gave a laugh.

"Anyway, Velma, this is Matches. Matches, like, meet Velma."

Velma stood and regarded the dragon. While finding information (reliable information, that is) on various spooks and ghouls was a difficult endeavour, it seemed as though every dusty tome or ancient tablet had something about dragons. They were big, they were small, they flew, they walked, they swam, they breathed flame, they summoned storms, they spoke, they only roared, they were animals, they were intelligent beings, they were divine, demonic, dead, living, gods, devils, and celestial beings. In short, there was far, _far_ too much on dragons for Velma to separate the fact from the fiction.

"Hello, Matches. Pleasure to meet you." One thing she was certain about, however, was that it couldn't hurt to be polite. The dragon rolled one of its eyes around to give her a bored examination, then gave a dismissive snort and sauntered into the school, its tail flicking back and forth like that of a vexed cat.

"Huh," Shaggy gave Velma a smile. "I think he likes you."

* * *

><p>The mountain had long crumbled, the dark castle that had sat atop it nothing more than ruined piles of half-melted stone and metal. A shattered cauldron lay on its side, its walls blossomed outwardly in great jagged strips. The twisted remains of of a large mirror frame had faded from a bright copper, slowly overcome with rust, its glass strewn across the ground and mixed with shattered vials and containers. The bones of some great beast lay amoung the largest of the boulders, the creature's massive bulk doing little to save it from the collapse. All things organic had returned to the bog whence they had risen, or were in the process of doing so.<p>

Except for one thing.

It wasn't terribly impressive, looking for all the world like an old, wrinkled potato. It was, perhaps, of an unusually large size, but there was little about it that was truly odd. Until it began to move, that is. It was subtle at first, just a twitch, but this proved enough to catch the attention of a small bird. The bird landed on a nearby rock, cocking its head to the side to observe the apparently free food. After a few moments without movement, the bird hopped closer and gave the potato an experimental peck. Finding no danger, the bird pecked again, the side of its meal splitting open to reveal a gaping mouth filled with overlapping rows of needle-like teeth.

The bird was dead before it realized its food was alive.

Empowered by the flesh, bone, and blood, the thing began to change. Thin, vine-like tendrils twisted themselves from its sides, stretching out across the rubble, latching onto whatever holds could be found. Slowly, the creature pulled itself from the ruin. It landed on a small patch of dirt and grass. Its tentacles set to work, rooting up worms and grubs to feed into the thing's maw. With each thing it devoured, it grew that much bigger, that much stronger. Movement in a nearby tree caught its attention, and its vines stretched once more. Above its mouth, a single, blood-red eye opened.

"Yesssss..." Its voice was like dry leaves and cracking leather. "...Revolta..."

Deep in the caves and dark places of the bog, the Spiderbats stirred from their long hibernation, called by the name of their Mistress. They too were hungry, starving from their wait. They did not wait for night, and descended upon the bog as a dark, toothy cloud. They gorged themselves on the blood of the animals, bringing down even the most tenacious creatures through sheer numbers. The Creeper followed behind them, tearing into the flesh left behind at an almost leisurely pace.

After all, the feast was only beginning.

* * *

><p>Slimewart Stew, as it turned out, was only about half as unappealing as its name suggested. Really, as long as she ignored the texture, taste, and smell, Velma found that it wasn't totally inedible. If she was careful to avoid the strange green and brown chunks of... something that floated in her bowl, anyway. Shaggy and Scooby, of course, seemed to find it absolutely delicious, going through several bowls each.<p>

"So, Ms. Dinkley," Miss Grimwood seemed to notice the trouble she was having, and subtly slid a small plate of what looked to be normal, human-safe bread over. "What is it you would like to know about life here at the school?" Velma thought on this, trying a nibble of the bread. Too her relief, it was indeed normal and fit for consumption.

"Well, I guess saying 'everything' would be putting too broad a point on it..." She joked weakly, looking at the occupants of the table. Despite what common sense told her, all of the girls were present, daintily (well, not so dainty on Winnie's part) sipping their stew. "Why don't you tell me how a typical day goes around here?"

"Of course." Grimwood smiled encouragingly at her. "Typically, each day starts right here with breakfast."

"Like, can't learn on an empty stomach." Shaggy helpfully interjected, then went back to inhaling his stew.

"Yes, quite." The Headmistress nodded. "After that, each girl goes to her first class of the day. Winnie goes to Shaggy in what is likely a futile attempt to work out some of her boundless energy,"

"Never gonna happen." Winnie boasted.

"Sibella has historical studies," Miss Grimwood continued, ignoring the interruption. "Elsa has that time for any repair or upkeep she needs to perform on herself, Phantasma has Wailing and Chain Rattling, and Tanis has her Cursework." The woman paused as a floating white glove appeared, bearing a cup of tea. "Ah, lovely. Each hour, the girls move on to their next class. We break for lunch, of course, then get right back to it. We finish studies at five in the afternoon, at which point the girls are free to do what they wish until dinner, at eight. Bed time is at nine-thirty, excepting special occasions." She sipped the tea, and closed her eyes briefly as she savoured the taste. "That is, obviously, when we are not training."

"Training?" Velma was quite intrigued. Did the monster world have its own sports? Its own Olympics, even? "For what?"

"Volleyball." Sibella supplied with a sly smile. Somehow, she made the word sound like an innuendo.

"We have a game every year." Elsa explained. "Against Camp Calloway."

"And we _win_ every year, too!" Winnie added bombastically.

"Thanks to Coach Shaggy, that is." Phantasma finished with a surprisingly low-key giggle.

"That's quite true." Miss Grimwood agreed. "Until Shaggy came along, we lost each year without fail. This year, I feel we shall have our fifth straight victory!" This was met with a cheer from the girls. It sounded not unlike cats being skinned alive. Eager to put a stop to the noise, Velma voiced the first question she could think of.

"So, each of you has a, uh, class with Shaggy?" This was actually something she had been wondering about for a short while. She could see how a werewolf might need regular exercise, but a phantom? An ancient corpse? A vampire? It seemed unlikely to her that they could receive any tangible benefits from working out. Then again, she hadn't thought they would be eating stew, either.

"Oh yes." Grimwood nodded. "As I mentioned, Winnie has a session with Shaggy first. After that, it's Elsa, then Phantasma, then a break for lunch, and then Sibella. Tanis is his final student of the day. Again, that's when we're not training. Girls, why don't you each tell Ms. Dinkley what you've been working on?"

"Stamina!" Winnie immediately answered. "Pretty soon, no werewolf alive will be able to outlast me in a race!"

"Agility." Elsa said. "It really helps with my stiff joints." Velma chose to ignore that particular pun, if only because she liked Elsa.

"Possession!" Phantasma somehow managed to giggle without actually giggling, making the word come out very bubbly. 'Possession' was not a word that was meant to be bubbly. "Having a human to practice on makes things so much easier."

"Make-outs." Sibella intoned quite seriously, looking Velma straight in the eye. Velma, understandably, sprayed half-chewed bits of bread across the table.

"Wha-?"

"Hide and Seek." The vampire quickly amended, as though she had merely misspoke. "Stalking prey is a very important skill for me to develop." Velma very strongly got the feeling she was being teased. (And, really, getting teased by a vampire was the last thing she needed right now.) Shaggy, of course, was completely oblivious, eying her uneaten stew. With perhaps a small touch of frustration, she pushed the bowl to him. Miss Grimwood shot Sibella a disapproving look, while the other girls appeared unsure of who to side with.

"Right." Velma said flatly, before forcing her attention to Tanis. She had to remember that any one of the females in the room could easily kill her should she start any arguments, even if she now doubted they actually would. "So, Djanet, what about you?" The mummy frowned at her for a moment, eyes narrowing.

"Tanis." She corrected stonily. (Apparently, faux confusion between Greek and Ancient Egyptian names was not good for diffusing tension.) Tanis briefly turned to Winnie. "Thank you for the stew." The smallest student then left the table and descended the stairs without another word.

A silence settled over the room. Even Shaggy and Scooby had taken note, both looking rather surprised.

"I'll go talk with her." Sibella was the first to speak, sliding out of her chair and disappearing after the mummy.

"Uh..." Confusion and apprehension warred within Velma's head. "What did I say?"

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry." Miss Grimwood found her voice. "It's all my fault, really. I should have warned you; Tanis doesn't like being reminded about her human life, Djanet especially." She explained. "So few people are educated on Ancient Egypt, I simply didn't even think of it! So, please, don't blame yourself. You really couldn't have known." Velma stood.

"I should go apologise."

"Like, I don't know if-"

"Why don't I take another look at your neck?" Elsa rose and placed her arm around Velma's shoulders, leading her from the room and back towards the main hall. The bespectacled woman wanted to resist, but, well, Six-foot seven flesh golem with ridiculously huge muscles. Elsa kept her arms firmly in place all the way up the stairs and down the hall, only releasing Velma when they'd gotten to her room. Velma, for her part, focused her mind on not panicking or imagining the ghoul snapping her like a dry twig.

"L-look," She said, stepping back out of Elsa's reach. "I really didn't mean to upset Tanis." She was quite surprised when the large girl smiled and waved the statement away.

"Don't worry about it." The golem said. "She's just at that age." The immediate, snarky response ("What, two-thousand and fourteen?") took a touch of effort to keep down, but Velma managed. "I just wanted to make sure you stayed out of the way." Velma's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Out of the way?" As a former meddling kid, Velma was very nearly allergic being told to 'stay out of the way'. It was almost as reviled a command as 'Go home' and 'Don't investigate'. (And 'Stop staring, it's creepy', but that was another matter entirely.)

"We've sorta gotten a pattern going the past few years." Elsa stated. "Something upsets Tanis, Sibella talks with her for a while, then she spends the rest of the day hanging around Coach Shaggy." She shrugged. "It's not complicated, but it works. If you went and tried to apologise, you could mess up the whole thing." The entire situation suddenly struck Velma as being extremely unfair, though she wasn't sure why. Perhaps it was the way she was being forbidden from even attempting to make amends. She shook it off.

"This happens often?" The researcher did not relish the idea of walking on eggshells around Tanis for the duration of her stay here. Elsa gave a short look around, then motioned to Velma's door. Velma obliged her silent request, and the two stepped into the privacy of the room. (Though, that wasn't worth much when Phantasma could just float through the walls at will.)

"Ok, between you and me?" Elsa sighed. "I think Tanis is heading for the Rage stage." That... had not been remotely what Velma had been expecting.

"Rage stage?" It sounded like a bad punk band or something.

"Undead existence happens in stages." Elsa explained. "Or, that's what I was taught, anyway. The main ones are Ignorance, Jealousy, Rage, Obsession," She ticked each one off on her fingers as she spoke. "Melancholy, Acceptance, Mania, and Embracing. Everyone starts at Ignorance, but goes through the others in their own order."

"Like the stages of grief."

"Right, like that. Some go from Ignorance straight to Mania, others might hit Melancholy or Rage along the way." Something about all of this seemed like a sensitive, seldom discussed subject to Velma.

"What about you?" She asked. It would be lying to say she wasn't fascinated. Her inner researcher was practically doing backflips.

"Eh, I want straight to Acceptance, but I'm a special case." She shrugged, then answered Velma's inevitable question before it could be asked. "Because I was never alive in the first place, I'm lucky enough not to know what it feels like. In a few years time, I might end up in another stage, but I'm ok with what I am for now."

"Is it really all that different from being alive?" Her research indicated that it really wasn't, but it had become increasingly obvious today that her research was _deeply_ flawed. "I mean, aside from your origins and the obvious effects of it, you seem like any living person."

"Ugh." Elsa cringed, then shook her head. "See, that's why I didn't want you apologising. For anyone who actually remembers being human, that's a really horrible thing to be told. I mean, it even hurts _me_ a little, and I'm supposed to be a perfect imitation of life." She picked a bit at some of the stitches on her arm. "Not that I actually am." And thus did Velma realise she'd insulted yet another of her hosts. Between her inadvertent verbal attacks on Tanis and Elsa, her literal attack on Sibella, and her near-stabbing of Winnie, she'd wronged a full two-thirds of the people at the school. (Not counting Shaggy, of course, on the grounds that he was Shaggy.)

"Er..." The bespectacled woman searched for a way to retract the offending words without further hurting Elsa's feelings. Answers to this quandary were not forthcoming, and Velma cursed her lack of social grace.

"Look, just..." Elsa waved her hand awkwardly. "Don't ask the undead about their human lives, and don't compare them to the living. As a human, you literally can't comprehend what being undead feels like, and as the unliving, we can't possibly explain what we've..." She shook her head, then sighed. "The best response you could possibly hope for is making them depressed, and at worst you might tip them into the Mania stage. With the way Tanis has been going, she's going to hit Rage and start lashing out if this keeps happening."

"I," Velma paused, having failed to find anything resembling a perfect apology. She went with what she had, for lack of options, if nothing else. "I'm sorry. I didn't know." Elsa smiled, a little.

"Yeah. There's a reason the closest stage to being alive is called Ignorance."

* * *

><p>Eddie didn't question the presence of Nivicolum, at least not outwardly. Though, given his position, this wasn't surprising. After all, Daphne was the only reason he wasn't still serving time for his little Sky Skeleton stunt. He was always careful to do exactly what he was told, and only that. He did not fancy going back to prison just because he'd somehow ticked her off by overstepping his bounds. If his boss should suddenly start illegally exporting Tibetan Owls, well, it wasn't his place to notice. Not like anyone would listen to him in a case of his word against hers, anyway.<p>

"Ya got a call." He informed her as she settled back into her seat, the owl fluttering to the empty co-pilot's seat. He held out the satellite phone.

"From Freddie?" Daphne took the offered phone and put it to her ear, but heard only static. "When?"

"'Bout an hour ago." The pilot shrugged. "Said something about Louisiana, but the blizzard killed the signal." She frowned.

"Is it clear enough for us to take off?" Again, Eddie shrugged.

"Helluva lotta wind, but it should be pretty smooth above the clouds. Getting that high in the first place is gonna take some doing, though. Be safer to wing South at a low altitude and speed, an' look for a break in the cover to slip through. Fuel might get tight." It didn't matter to him either way, he'd practically specialized in dangerous, low fuel flying.

"We don't have time to waste." Daphne chewed her lower lip. "But crashing isn't going to do us any good. Think you can get us through the clouds in one piece?" Eddie shrugged.

"Whatever you say, Ms. Blake."

* * *

><p>Skittering.<p>

Movement in the dark. Vibration thrums through the strands. The anchor burrows more deeply.

Eyes scour for damage. Claws tend the rips. Teeth snip errant threads.

Bone pushes outward. Muscle crawls like moss. Blood fills the gaps.

And the web grows ever thicker.


	6. Chapter 6

I'm quite pleasantly surprised by how well received this story has been. I apologise for my slowness in writing, but *insert horrible justification here*.

Questions: Blood Brandy- Vampires, and most other higher-intelligence undead, are _especially_ prone to certain stages, like Embracing, Mania, and Obsession. I'll probably end up going into it in the story, but basically, the nature of vampires makes them prone to sociopathy/madness, and ones who are born vampires are at extra risk, due to lacking the moral compass and empathy that being human provides. Remzal von Enili- Believe you me, Fred's gonna be plenty important once he's in on what's happening. It may sound odd, but he's actually the smartest member of the gang, next to Velma. They's gonna _need_ him. Lord Xantos A. Fowl- Congrats on picking up on that little tidbit, boss. I didn't actually expect anyone to notice. Van Ghoul actually calls her Nivicolum _because_ that's what she is, rather than it being her name. Giving her a name would, to him, signify ownership. She's less a pet and more a semi-civilized wild animal that hangs out with him.

**6**

The dark, earthen floor was surprisingly warm and soft, cushioning her bare feet as she walked. She had no real idea of where she was or how she had gotten there, but such thoughts hardly touched her mind. She failed to notice her total deficiency of clothes as well, along with the curious fact that, even without her glasses, her vision was sharper and more vibrant than it had been since she was seven years old. Even the lack of a sky managed to escape her attention.

Instead, she was fully transfixed on the length of red yarn that stretched into the invisible distance. She followed it with a deep-seated fascination, paying little heed where it led her. She greedily gathered it up as she walked, but, somehow, she held naught in her hands but the frayed end. This, she did notice, with more than a touch of ire.

In spite of her inability to collect the yarn, she continued to pull at it, nearly stumbling over her own feet in her haste. The dark soil beneath her gave way to rocky pebbles, then to rough stone, and finally to a road of interlocked brick. Walls sprang up on either side of the road, growing from the ground like great stone hedges to towering heights. She paid this development no heed, fervently following the yarn through the myriad of twists and turns that the corridor made. Paths branched off the sides at seemingly random intervals, twisting to their own unknown ends or opening into small rooms, but she ignored them, heading ever deeper.

How long she chased the red, she did not know or care, but it eventually led her out of the corridor, into a massive open chamber. In the distance, at the far end of the room, she could just make out another corridor. And another person. The Other pulled on the yarn, and she pulled back, angrily. It was _hers_! How dare the Other try to take it! She stalked forward, gathering the yarn as fast as she could, while the Other mirrored her actions, bringing them both nearer the center of the room.

As she drew closer, she was mildly surprised to find that the Other was, in fact, another her, identical in every way. This did not increase her desire to share. They each pulled on the yarn, halting only a few feet from each other and drawing it taut in a tug-of-war. Quite suddenly, with a sound like a whip crack, it snapped. The pieces dissolved almost instantly, fading into nothing, and whatever spell the red had held over her was broken. And she realized that there was, in fact, no other her. She was alone.

Trapped in the center of the labyrinth, with no red yarn to guide her.

* * *

><p>Velma awoke slowly with a groan, and found herself propped rather uncomfortably against the headboard of her bed, book still in hand. It seemed she'd fallen asleep whilst reading. It certainly wasn't an unusual occurrence for her, there always seemed to be more books to devour than there were hours in the day, but it always managed to bring a twinge of self-annoyance at her lack of foresight. Placing the book (<em>Zombies, Gorlaims, and the Fleshy Undead<em>, as she had finished the surprisingly short _A History of Grimwood_) on the end table, next to the lamp, she grimaced at the stab of pain that shot through her neck and shoulder at the movement. Well, it was her own fault for sleeping in such an uncomfortable position.

She took her glasses into one hand, rubbing at the bridge of her nose with the other. She just knew that the arms of her specs had left little red lines pressed into her skin, to say nothing of the indentations left by the nose-pieces. Putting her glasses back on, she quickly ran her hands through her hair, forcefully pulling loose the few tangles she'd developed and reducing the bed-head. Her comb (she'd never managed to find a brush that didn't make her hair frizz to physics-defying proportions) lay in her bag, but she was feeling far too lazy to retrieve it.

She was quite tempted to simply go back to sleep, and it was still dark out (rightly so, as her travel clock told her it was only one in the morning), but the gurgling of her stomach convinced her to get up. After her brief discussion with Elsa about the various stages of unlife, she'd closed herself in her room for the rest of the afternoon, reading. Dinner had come and passed without without anyone even checking on her, though she hardly blamed them. The probably assumed as she did: That she would only make things worse if she ran into Tanis at any point. Still, missing dinner, combined with giving her Slimwart Stew to Shaggy (and a breakfast that consisted of trail-mix and slightly old donuts), caused her enough concern to emerge from her exile. She had been doing enough, ahem, momentary blacking out without adding hunger spells to the list.

Thus, she stole into the halls of the school, moving (somewhat) silently, so as not to disturb any others whose rooms might be nearby. She didn't know if any of them actually required sleep (well, aside from the living residents, of course), but she wasn't taking chances. Besides, clomping around in the middle of the night was just plain rude.

The hallways seemed less prone to distorting now than they did during the day, though Velma supposed it might just be that she was paying more attention now. _A History of Grimwood_ had told her the spell over the halls caused them to stretch and shrink 'as needed', but had failed to explain what constituted a 'need'. At any rate, she quickly reached the kitchen. She was sure she could find something more edible than what she'd encountered so far (because, well, Shaggy), not that it would take much to qualify. And, if she absolutely had to, she was nearly hungry enough to go traipsing about the garden, where she was knew fresh food awaited. Luckily, that was not necessary. Tucked away in the (somehow, possibly magically, operational) fridge, she found a perfectly normal sandwich tucked away, along with a few assorted vegetables.

"Midnight snack?" Velma froze as the ridiculously overly-sensual voice floated over. Sibella. "Don't mind me..." She cooed. "Go right ahead." Oh, well, this... this was... She was alone with a vampire. Sunrise was still hours away. She had none of her weapons on her. She had absolutely nothing to protect herself with, aside from an entirely ineffective crucifix. Velma tried very hard to not panic.

"H-hey." Slowly, she turned to face the purple-tinted woman, making sure to avoid eye contact. Looking at Sibella helped drive the memories of the caverns into the back of her mind, so long as she didn't look into her eyes. All vampires, no matter how else they differed, had those same empty, hungering eyes. "What're you doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep." Sibella shrugged, slowly sliding around the table, ever closer. She appeared to be in no great hurry, yet she moved just fast enough to cut off any avenues of escape. "Instincts." She offered as explanation. She smiled and, unlike the smiles Velma had seen so far, fully displayed her fangs. (The rest of her teeth were nothing to discount, either, being plenty sharp.)

"O-oh." Velma edged away, nearly backing into the open refrigerator. Her hand twitched at her hip, clutching for a dagger that wasn't there.

"Yes," The younger woman continued, closing in. "We vampires are very territorial; we don't tolerate intruders." Bad. That's what this was. Very much so.

"Ah, your instincts know I was invited, right?" Velma tried to make it sound like a joke, but it came out closer to a plea. She backed up some more, and really did hit the fridge this time, rattling the upper shelf.

"They know." Sibella came to a stop so close that they were nearly touching. "They don't care that you're in my home." Her smile dropped, and the fact that she was shorter than Velma did little to lessen the intensity of her stare. "But being welcome to my home is _not_ an invitation to take what's mine." Scared as she was, the researcher was able to muster up a confused expression.

"What are you-"

"Don't think I haven't figured out what you're trying to do." The vampire growled gutturally. "Stay away from him." Velma blinked at her.

"...You mean Shaggy?" Disbelief was obvious in her voice. That's what this had been about?

"Don't call him that!" Sibella barked. "He's Coach Rogers to you, understand? Only we can call him Shaggy!" Despite herself, Velma felt amused. Shaggy had always been a magnet for the bizarre, but this type of attraction was almost ridiculous (if not completely without precedent). That the fearsome monster in front of her was phrasing things like a jealous schoolgirl (which, Velma supposed, she was), didn't help. She was half-expecting the phrase 'soulmates' to make an appearance next.

"You know I've been one of his closest friends for almost two decades, right?" She couldn't help but tease the vampire a bit, if only to let out some of her pent-up stress. This was the smartest thing Velma had ever done. "We even dated for a while when we were teens, so I think-" Vampires, it should be noted, do not take well to teasing.

Sibella's arm shot out, too fast for Velma to react. Luckily, rather than impaling the bespectacled woman or clawing her eyes out, the vampire grabbed something out of the fridge. A ripe tomato. With a sound akin to a wild dog, Sibella sank her fangs into the fruit and feasted. In but a moment, the tomato was reduced to a withered, empty husk.

"Listen carefully." The vampire held up what remained of her meal, breathing heavily. "The only reason _this_ is not _you_, is because it would be obvious who did it." She tossed the skin to the side. "But, I'm a smart girl; it won't take me long to figure out a more subtle method." She grabbed a fistful of Velma's shirt, and pulled. Velma's hand closed around the neck of a glass bottle sitting in the door of the fridge, but her body locked up when she met Sibella's eyes. "Leave before then, or die."

Dracula's daughter released her, and then was gone.

After some long minutes,Velma, trembling, mechanically closed the fridge and returned to her room. She open her bag, retrieving her silver dagger and a small vial of holy water, and sat on her bed, facing the door. She cried in silence, and did not move until sunrise.

* * *

><p>Getting Nivicolum through BTR Metropolitan customs was a chore and a half, especially as Daphne had no cage, or care product of any kind, for the rather large owl, nevermind proper paperwork. Still, the name Blake and a generous application of money greased the wheels of the procedural machine well enough that she wasn't delayed unreasonably long. Of course, it helped that no one was inclined to believe she was a danger to anyone; most just assumed she was a rich airhead whom had bought an owl for looks.<p>

Eddie accompanied her to the terminal as an impromptu bodyguard, scowling impressively at any who wandered too close to her, while she scanned the crowds for her driver. She quickly spotted him standing in the nearest passenger lounge, along with two other familiar faces.

"Stanley." The redhead nodded in greeting to the ex-racer, who raised an eyebrow at the owl perched on her shoulder, but didn't respond otherwise.

"Tarmac!" Eddie actually smiled at the brunette pilot standing next to the driver, reaching out and bumping fists with her.

"Drake." She returned. "You eat? We should grab a bite." Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Daphne. "Need anything before me and the Bonehead scoot?" The heiress shook her head.

"I'll be fine, thank you. I may end up needing a flight or two in a few days, but you two are free until then." She gave the pilots a nod. "Sylvie, Eddie. Please try to stay out of trouble."

"Yeah, sure thing, boss-lady. Wicked bird." Sylvie waved off Daphne's concern and threw an arm around Eddie's shoulders as they walked away. "You ever been in Baton Rouge before? I tell ya, just down the road they got the best shrimp you ever..." Daphne smiled at the pair, before turning back to Stanley.

"Been waiting long?" Judging by her driver's surly attitude, she assume he had.

"Nah," He rumbled lowly. "Just all friggin' day." He snorted, then jerked his head in the direction of the large man slumbering on the seats behind him. "Sleeping beauty over there just couldn't stand leaving without you, then got hit by jet lag not an hour later. Poor dope spent half the afternoon trying to stay awake so he wouldn't miss you comin' in." Daphne stared at the sleeping man, touched by his almost childlike devotion.

"Oh, Fred..." He may have been terrible at expressing it, but things like this showed her that he really did care. Stanley Testarosa just rolled his eyes, stuffing his hands into his pockets, and walked off towards the outside. Paying the grumpy driver no mind, Daphne seated herself next to her boyfriend. "Freddie..." She whispered softly, wrapping her arms around one of his.

"...Daph?" He stirred, slowly blinking at her as a tired smile sprung to his face. She wondered if this was similar to what it would be like to wake up next to him every morning. She could only hope. "When did you get here?"

"Just now." She smiled apologetically. "Sorry you had to wait so long."

"Don't worry about it." Fred shrugged. "I had Sylvie and Stanley to keep me company, after... There's an owl on your shoulder." He pointed, having finally noticed the rather large bird.

"Uh, yeah." Daphne laughed nervously. "This is Nivicolum. Nivicolum, Fred. I, uh, my friend," She swallowed, silently hoping her boyfriend wouldn't ask for details. "My friend asked me to look after her while my friend is, um, away."

"Oh." Freddie looked thoughtful for a moment. "I guess that explains why you thought they'd be upset." He smiled, much to her relief. "I've never really seen an owl this close up before." He, in his usual innocent way, reached out to feel the bird's feathers. Nivicolum did not like this. "Ow!" Fred cried in surprise, snatching his hand back. "She bit me!"

"Freddie!" Daphne gasped, a jolt of fear going through her at her boyfriend's injury, despite how minor it was. "I'm so sorry, my friend never, um, mentioned anything about her biting anyone." She now felt much, much more uncomfortable with having the owl perched on her shoulder.

"Maybe she's just hungry?" Fred offered unconvincingly, clutching his hand. It occurred to her that she had no idea what Nivicolum's diet was like. For not the first time, Daphne silently cursed Vincent Van Ghoul and his chronic vagueness.

"Come on," She said, standing up and holding out a hand to her boyfriend. "Let's get that hand patched up."

After finding an aid station, they did just that. Fred had only received a warning nip from the owl, so it wasn't more than a spritz of anti-bacterial spray and a small white bandage before they were on their way. He was yawning as they stepped outside the airport and found Stanley waiting for them with a limo. As they climbed inside, Nivicolum took the opportunity to swoop from Daphne's shoulder and settle on the seats farthest from the couple, which they did not mind in the least.

It only took a few minutes for Freddie to begin to nod off again. Seizing her opportunity, Daphne pressed up against his side, and he hesitantly placed his arm around her in a decidedly romantic manner. Delicious, delicious progress. He fell asleep mere minutes later.

"Great," she heard Stanley grumble from the front. "Rush hour. Gonna take for-friggin-ever to get to the hotel..." Daphne smiled contentedly to herself.

Somehow, that didn't seem so bad.

* * *

><p>Velma awoke with a start, heart racing. She didn't bother to entertain hopes that she'd dreamt her encounter with Sibella; even if she felt like rationalizing the fact that she had fallen asleep sitting up, the unsheathed dagger and vial of holy water she held left no room for doubt. Instead, almost unbidden, she recalled something Father Duarte had said to her, as they stood before the entrance to the vampire's cavern lair.<p>

"_Of all the beast's weapons, greater than its speed or strength or its claws,"_ He'd said. _"You must beware the fear. If you allow fear to take root in your heart, you will become as a puppet on strings, at mercy to its manipulations. But, if you stay strong, hold onto faith, the beast is the one who will feel the fear, and be at _your_ mercy."_

Velma knew her course.

The crucifix around her neck went into her bag. The dagger, she strapped to her hip. Her shorts and shirt, made for fair-weather hiking, were replaced with a form-fitting, flexible ensemble of her own design (if not manufacture). The long-sleeved shirt and pants were both weaved with Kevlar fibers, with one-centimeter-thick titanium plates sewn into place over vital areas. It wouldn't stop a bullet, but it hadn't been designed with guns in mind, as evidenced by the dried garlic and sage leaves sewn into the cuffs and the cross emblazoned across the back. The vest, however, was and could. She removed the outfit's neckguard in an act of sheer defiance (Also, her neck and shoulder were quite upset by her inability to sleep properly and would not appreciate having heavy armour resting on them). The uniform had been expensive to commission, but it had been worth every penny (or krona, to be more accurate).

Sibella would soon learn why you don't threaten Occult Hunter Firebrand Dinkley.

There came a rap-tap-tapping upon Velma's chamber door.

"Like, you awake, Velma?" Shaggy's voice, slightly muffled by the door, held just a touch of concern. Quickly, the researcher finished stowing away her holy water and various monster-fighting tools in the myriad pockets and pouches she now wore, and answered the door.

"Shaggy." Before he could react, she reached up and pulled him into a tight embrace (mostly because she wanted to rub the cuffs of her sleeves against his neck, and also because she really wanted a hug). Her shoulder protested at holding her arm up, but she held onto Shaggy for a few more moments, making sure the sage and garlic, as well as her own scent, were firmly soaked in. Let the vampire smell _that_.

"Uh..." Tentatively, he hugged her back. "Guess you're, like, feeling better, then?" She wasn't, not in the least, but she had to act quickly if she wanted to survive around here. She let go and looked him in the eye.

"Screw acclimation." She declared confidently, making a fist. "We're gonna eat breakfast, and then you're going to show me this mystery of yours so we can _kick its ass_." Shaggy stared at her for a moment, blinking owlishly.

"...Yes'm."

The rest of the school was already present in the kitchen, munching on various things and generally looking half asleep. Except for Sibella, of course, who looked as poised and perfect as ever, sipping from a mug of what Velma suspected was tea, if only because it would add to the image. The researcher pointedly ignored the vampire, grabbing the cleanest plate she could find and searching the fridge for anything safe for (non-Shaggy) human consumption.

"Sleep well?" Inwardly, Velma sighed as Sibella appeared next to her. Not even a moment's peace, eh? Sibella, it seemed, was pressing the attack. Outwardly, she maintained as bored an expression as she possibly could, not turning to address the shorter woman.

"Just fine, thanks." She said dismissively. Vampires, Velma knew from both research _and_ experience (And having both to rely on was certainly a nice change of pace), did not take well to being ignored. Due to their own wide array of abilities and the human world's seeming obsession with them, the creatures of the night tended to have rather massive egos that demanded they be feared, revered, or both. Indifference was sure to get under Sibella's skin.

"You seem tired." The vampire 'helpfully' observed, her voice veering dangerously close to amusement. Truly, Velma felt, the girl was far too smugly satisfied with herself for threatening an injured, half-asleep woman in the middle of the night. "_Bat_ dreams keep you awake?" Well, if that's how she was going to be...

Velma responded by offhandedly raising her left wrist towards Sibella's face.

"Hmm, talk to the haaaaaAAUGH!" The vampire recoiled from the sage and garlic, clutching at her nose, eyes wide with surprise and anger. "You little-!" Abruptly, Sibella caught herself, noticing that most of the room had turned to look at her. She glanced over to Shaggy, and Velma could practically see the wheels turning in her head. After a long moment, she turned back to the researcher, obviously struggling to keep a calm expression. "...interesting choice of perfume." Content that there would be no bloodshed, the rest of the room went back to their meals.

"Just a little something." Velma made a valiant effort to keep the smirk from her face, but failed. Sibella stalked back over to her seat and set about fiercely ignoring the bespectacled woman. Operation: Don't Get Killed by a Vampire, was well underway.

Unfortunately for Velma, so was Operation: Murder the Human.

* * *

><p>Daphne awoke with a smile on her face and prepositional phrases on her mind. She sprang from the downy hotel bed, her body invigorated and her brain churning with brilliant wordplay. She knew now what had been off about the ending of her book! She would need more chapters to fix things, but all she needed and more swirled about in her inspired thoughts. She quickly dug through the suitcase containing her rough draft with glee; She had the magic!<p>

She fished out her pencil and paper, triumphantly placing graphite against white and... blinked at the tools before her, mind blank. Words fled from her. Brilliance vanished into the void. The magic fizzled to nothing. She tried vainly to will her inspiration to return, if only long enough to get her started. Just one sentence, she could work from that. Long seconds ticked by, and she sighed, her former giddy energy deflating and collapsing into a tired frustration.

"_Every_ time." She muttered, letting the paper and pencil fall to the floor next to her suitcase. She dragged herself from her bedroom into the suite proper, tossing a glance towards Freddie's door. He was still sleeping, if the soft snores emanating from within were anything to go by. Good. As much as Daphne loved the big palooka, and as much as his indomitable cheer would instantly turn her mood around, she wanted to spend a little while to herself, brooding over her writer's block. Brooding was good for the creative process.

She schlepped her way over to the kitchenette and eyed the high-end coffeemaker. She liked coffee. Coffee did not like her. It made her a touch too manic and hungry for her own good. On the other hand, her parents saw coffee as a 'working man's drink' and never let their children touch the stuff. Nevermind that her sisters were all pretty much addicted to it. Eh, what the heck, she made some; a caffeine addiction was good for the creative process. Bagels, she thought, bagels with cream cheese were also good for the creative process.

As she munched on her bagel and waited for the coffee to percolate, contemplating whether or not strawberries with sugar were good for the creative process as well, the phone on the counter suddenly rang. Strange, she hadn't requested a wake-up call, and everyone working for Siegfried had the number of her Satellite phone. She answered it, if only to stop the ringing.

"Ms. Blake?" The receptionist down at the front desk inquired. "A package has arrived for you, from a Mr. Van Ghoul. It's quite large. Do you want me to send it up?" After a moment of surprise, wherein she wildly wondered if the missing man had managed to mail himself to her, Daphne told her yes. Five minutes later, a bellboy with a trolly arrived, received a tip, and left Daphne with said package.

"She wasn't kidding." Quite large, as it turned out, was a bit of an understatement. The package was wrapped entirely in plain brown paper, and was easily big enough to hold two or even three missing magicians. Nivicolum swooped in from, well, Daphne actually wasn't entirely sure where the owl had been roosting, and perched on the edge of the countertop. Her apparent interest in the package did little to assuage the heiress's apprehensions.

Taped to the front of the box was a small white envelope, addressed to one Daphne Blake at this very hotel from one Vincent Van Ghoul in a surprisingly legible doctor's scrawl. Daphne took the envelope with a small amount of hesitation and opened it, retrieving the piece of paper inside.

_Incredibly predictable._ It said. Well, that cemented just who it was from. _These items I have sent to you should prove quite useful. I imagine you could use all the help you can get._ Why he couldn't have just left the package with the sending, she couldn't fathom, though she had a sneaking suspicion it was to show off.

Considering who it had come from, the note was shockingly short and only mildly condescending. Briefly, she wondered if she might continue to get notes and letters all throughout her investigation, but she supposed even the great Vincent Van Ghoul couldn't predict her actions _that_ far ahead. Well, probably not.

Setting aside both that line of thought and the note, the redhead pulled open the brown paper to find that the package was, in fact, several parcels of varying sizes arranged in a cube. She went for the largest first, which proved to be much lighter than it looked. Inside, she found a rather ornate brass birdcage, obviously for Nivicolum. The derisive hoot from the owl told Daphne that getting her in it would not be easy.

Keeping with the theme set by the first box, the next few contained more items for coexisting with Nivicolum. A couple falconer's gloves, some official-looking papers and permits, what looked like some kind of fuzzy chew toy, a pair of leather shoulder-guards, quite a few specialized cleaning supplies, a large aquarium filled with mice, various _frozen_ rodents, talon clippers and other such maintenance gadgets, and a very thick folder filled with what seemed to be instructions on everything she could conceivably need to know about owls, which was apparently far more than she'd have expected. The bird, it seemed, was a high-maintenance girl.

And hungry, if the way she was trying to get at the mice was any indication. Daphne briefly considered waking Fred to have him deal with the decidedly icky process of feeding the owl, but she wanted to open the final package before he was up, just in case. Pushing down her revulsion, and snapping on some rubber gloves from under the sink, she snagged a little mouse by the tail and held it out to Nivicolum, cringing and looking away as the bird hungrily horked it down.

"Ugh, why couldn't you just eat owl kibble or something?" Unsure of how much to feed her, the writer simply offered the owl squeaking morsels until she stopped accepting them and winged her way up to the curtain rod to sleep. With one last shudder, Daphne threw the gloves in the garbage and turned her attention to the final box.

It was smaller than the rest, not even as big as a shoe-box. Lifting it to the recently-vacated countertop, she found that it was quite hefty, despite its size. Something told her this was not just more owl supplies. Removing the lid, she found herself looking at another note.

_Keep your friends and yourself armed, always. You will find far more in your journey than witches and webs, I fear. Use none of these lightly._

Beneath the note, she found weapons.

The first was a small, double-ended blade with an ivory grip and pitch black edges. Carved into every inch were depictions of eyes, wide and staring. It gave her the creeps. The second weapon was far more mundane, looking for all the world like a pair of brass knuckles. Well, 'bronze knuckles', to be more accurate. The third, a rough leather glove, she really didn't want to know what kind of leather, clutching a small spiked ball. Fourth, what looked to be a pair of stone manacles. She wasn't really sure how that constituted a weapon. And, fifth, a black leather collar with a small gold charm on it. Two guesses whom that was intended for.

There seemed to be no further notes, much to Daphne's annoyance. Sure, the owl had hours worth of hand-written notes attached, but the strange, probably magical weapons didn't get so much as a scribble explaining what they even were. She wondered if this was Van Ghoul's idea of a joke.

Closing the box and setting it aside, she grabbed the folder and prepared herself for the long, arduous, probably condescending slog that was Nivicolum 101.


	7. Chapter 7

Man, the things I've learned in the course of researching for this story.

Responses:

Remzal von Enili: It's not that she's a student of his, but more that she's the only one of the trio that he thinks is competent. Rogue-scholar07: In Velma's case, I'd say the trophy is not being murdered by a vampire. Bookworm Gal: Very nice analysis. Velma is indeed a character who is driven by knowledge, both spreading it and gaining it. Of course, much of her difficulty is derived from a kind of culture shock. Monsters have their own rules of etiquette and behavior that she's never really gotten a look into, so she's making mistakes as she tries to understand. It doesn't help that she's not very adept at social interactions in the first place. As for the human/vampire rivalry, it's really more of a one-sided murderous jealousy. One which even Shaggy may well clue into before too long. I find it interesting that you should say Sibella and Velma are on the same side, as it made me think: What side, exactly, would that be? MadTeaLady: Yes. Yes it is.

**7**

Something was very wrong.

Jack Rivet had lived in this bog for the last thirty years, since he'd been a child. His whole life had been a struggle with and against the forces of nature in this place, where few desired to be. Through the Spring, Fall, the Summer, and Winter; Through torrential rains, freezing winds, and boiling heat he'd survived with this bog. Sometimes because of it, sometimes in spite of it. The animals provided him with food and furs, else bites and scratches, while the trees gave him a small cabin and furniture or smashed said cabin's walls in, depending on his wit and luck.

Jack had a knowledge of the bog that none could match, and fewer wanted to match. Most thought him eccentric at best, crazy at worst. He was, perhaps, somewhere in between. Such things happen when one spends too much time apart from people and surrounded by less than mundane wilderness. At least he still possessed enough of his sanity to realize that half of what he had seen in his years was decidedly insane. Misshapen women with four arms, for instance, were obviously not real.

The quicksand pits that had suddenly come into being some half a decade ago, however, were. That had been a bad time for the bog, or swamp, as it had been. Jack had been in this place for long enough to perceive and understand the undercurrent that ran through it, unless that too was psychosis, and the bog had been near death back then. It made Jack shudder to remember it.

It had been the same as always one day, humid and miserable and laden with bugs. The water had been only a few inches deep, what with Summer well in swing. The animals had been in a rare abundance, something he'd been taking advantage of. Beavers and deer and racoons had been out and about, making use of the water while it was still around, while snakes and lizards basked in the sun.

The next day, the swamp died.

He'd felt it like a physical pain in his chest, as though the life were draining out of him. The trees, once strong and healthy, withered into dead husks, devoid of leaves or fruit or seeds. Some stayed in place as grim monuments to the life that had existed here, while others toppled with wet splats into the quickly deepening peat. The birds fled en masse, at least, those that didn't fall dead from their perches. The water was soaked into the rapidly forming biological mush, but there wasn't enough to sustain it. A strange moss had sprung up, formed thick mats across the acidic floor, and turned into dead, brown, dried-out masses in mere minutes. The few wet places that remained, twisted into pits of quicksand. Most of the animals died outright. Jack was nearly swallowed by the sands. And then, to his horror, everything stopped.

The swamp had died, and the bog that tried to take its place had collapsed in on itself before it had even gotten started. On that day, Jack became the only living thing for miles. Even now, he still doesn't know how he survived. He doesn't dwell on the fact that, by all means, he should have been long dead of dehydration after the first month, or starved to death by the end of the second.

After that, a permanent chill had settled, over both the bog and Jack. He did what he could to nurture life back into the place, that seemed to help drive the chill from him for a time, but it was slow and harsh going. It wasn't until the castle in the center of the bog that he knew couldn't be real, where the imaginary four-armed woman lived, exploded spectacularly later that year that things begun to grow again. A muskrat den here, a small tree there. It wasn't much, but it wasn't death. In the years since, this not-quite-swamp, not-quite-bog had slowly pulled itself back from annihilation. It wasn't healed, not by a long shot, but it was _possible_.

But now, that horrible feeling in his chest was back, sinking the chill straight to his bones. Something was very wrong.

* * *

><p>After Velma gave Sibella a whiff of what she had up (or, rather, in) her sleeve, breakfast was a peaceful affair. Vampires were much like any other predator, after all; they'd back off if you showed them you were more trouble than you were worth. Of course, Velma knew that it was only a temporary reprieve. With Shaggy on the line (at least in Sibella's mind), it was only a matter of time before the creature of the night made a move.<p>

Still, the researcher meant to enjoy it while it lasted. She feasted heartily on fruits and vegetables from the garden, trying to find a balance between making up for her earlier lack of eating and overindulgence. Making herself ill simply wouldn't do, not with a mystery on one side and Sibella on the other. Sometimes, she rather regretted not having Shaggy's iron stomach.

The gym teacher himself was seated at the far end of the table, negotiating with the headmistress in a low voice. When he had asked if he could take the day to show Velma the mystery afoot, the plump woman had enthusiastically agreed to the field trip. She agreed much less when he explained that he did not aim to take any of the girls with them. They had been entrenched in a quiet back-and-forth since. Shaggy did not appear to be winning.

Elsa sat to Velma's left, going at her arm with a rather large needle and medical thread, much to the researcher's discomfort. Sure, it was fascinating that the golem didn't appear to feel any pain, nor did she seem to be bleeding, but it was still off-putting to see someone stitching a chunk of human flesh into a hole in their arm. No one else seemed to mind, so Velma surmised that this was not an unusual occurrence. She did her best to maintain her appetite, and kept her eyes to the right.

To her right, across the table and down a few seats, Tanis brooded. The Ancient Egyptian glared unblinkingly at the... food on her plate, as though she could hate it out of existence. Velma wondered if she was still upset about yesterday, or if she was always this surly in the morning. She also wondered how the mummy planned on eating in the first place, since the lower half of her face was still tightly bound. A mystery, perhaps, for another time. So long long as the girl's ire was focused away from the researcher, Velma was content to let her be.

Phantasma sat next to Sibella, chatting away at the other girl, not phased (great, she was making puns in her head, now) by the vampire's lack of attention. She seemed to be explaining a rather complicated-sounding pipe-organ concerto she was composing, which apparently involved castanets, for whatever reason. 'Melting Hell', she called it. How ironic that the most cacophonic student was also the most musically inclined one. Or, at least, Velma hoped she was musically inclined in the non-reverse-good way. If her playing was anywhere as melodious as her giggling, the occult hunter would need to invest in some earplugs. Soon.

And Winnie, well, Velma had no idea where she was.

"Like, good news and bad news." Shaggy walked over with an optimistic smile. Velma waited a moment.

"And?" She prompted.

"Ok," Shaggy raised his hands diplomatically. "I've officially got the day off, but, like, there's a catch. We can't take the Mystery Machine or your car," And here he began to speak more and more quietly, as if to lessen the impact of his words. "And... we've gotta take... two of the girls." The impact was not lessened.

Velma tossed a sidelong glance at Ms. Grimwood, but the headmistress was entirely, suspiciously perhaps, focused on her tea. If the brunette didn't know any better, she'd say that Shaggy's boss shared her students' fears that the gym teacher might cut and run. She didn't know if that spoke to Shaggy's character, the ghouls', or both. (Hey, maybe Velma was just _that_ alluring. Ha. Right.) Either way, it wasn't the biggest setback in the world, depending on one thing.

"Who do we have to take?" Surely Grimwood wasn't blind or vindictive enough to mandate the presence of Sibella or Tanis. Right?

"Uh," Shaggy blinked. "Actually, like, that's more good news!" He sold his exuberance a bit hard, but Velma couldn't blame him, having to face down her decidedly unhappy self. "You get to choose who we bring!" Ok, that really was good.

"Elsa." She said immediately, and the golem gave her a nod. The medic and only ghoul Velma trusted to not maim her, on purpose or accidentally? Yeah, obvious first choice. The second, however, would require more thought. Sibella and Tanis were, of course, right out. The less time she spent around either of them, the better it would be for her health and sanity. Which left just Phantasma and Winnie.

On one hand, Phantasma seemed to be the closest girl to Sibella. As inexperienced as Velma was at dealing with inter-personal politics, she was fairly certain that getting the best friend of her enemy on her side would be advantageous. Then again, she doubted the vampire's pride would allow the phantom into the loop re: the Velma/Sibella wars, and she was afraid of how Dracula's daughter might react should she bring it to light herself. There was also the fact that leaving Phantasma here might act as a distraction for Sibella. The blue girl seemed a distracting sort.

On the other hand, Velma couldn't see any immediate benefit to taking Winnie along. She was loud (though probably no more so than Phantasma), hyperactive, and easily distracted; all of which would make clue hunting and mystery solving much more aggravating. Plus, Velma wasn't exactly comfortable with heading out into the unknown with a wild animal with strong instincts. Especially since it was still apparently that time of the lunar cycle wherein werewolves became 'frisky'.

The answer had become rather transparent, pun fiercely not intended.

"Phantasma, you up for a field trip?" Both the phantom and Sibella looked up in surprise, though the latter quickly covered her expression with indifference. Clearly, the vampire hadn't been expecting Velma to make such a seemingly aggressive move. Good, the more she surprised the predator, the longer she'd have before the Sibella acted.

"I love field trips!" Phantasma shrieked, hitting octaves that would probably give Scooby a conniption fit. Shaggy didn't even flinch, and the researcher feared that the upper ranges of his hearing had been burnt out from years of living with the ghoul. Earplugs moved from 'remember to buy' to 'number one priority'.

"Awesome." Velma deadpanned. "Fantastic. Let's go." She looked to Shaggy. "Where are we going?"

"Like, as much as I hate to say it," He shuddered uneasily. "We gotta go into the Barren Bog."

* * *

><p>It was her second day as an owl owner, and Daphne already thoroughly hated it. The feathers, the pellets, the claw marks all over the room, and sweet Mother of God, the black goop. Van Ghoul's notes said that horrible, horrible stuff was perfectly natural, but the heiress was quite certain that no <em>natural<em> thing could produce such a vile substance. She might well have permanently lost her ability to smell, and that's if luck was with her. She held back a gag at the memory, desperately wishing she could scrub it from her mind.

It didn't help that the bird herself was a mean piece of work. She'd as soon bite you as look at you, and she hissed at anyone who came near, making the slew of cleaning and care products useless. Daphne hadn't even known that owls _could_ hiss. The only respite from the violence came when the bird was sleeping, though being asleep didn't keep her from messing all over the place. All of this was also, apparently, perfectly natural. They'd had to leave the hotel, which she was pretty sure they were now barred from for life, if only because there was no way she could ever keep Nivicolum indoors for any length of time again.

If Van Ghoul wasn't dead already, Daphne was going to murder him.

So, they were again on the road. Stanley had returned to Siegfried at her request, leaving them with a rental jeep that they had been promised could traverse the rough roads to Miss Grimwood's Finishing School for Girls. Fred was in the driver's seat, grinning quite widely at the whole situation. Daphne had to admit, the sense of nostalgia from having him at the wheel as they rode off in search of the unknown was intoxicating. And the fact that they would be meeting up with the rest of the gang in just a few hours certainly helped her mood.

So, of course, Van Ghoul had to ruin it for her without even being present. She couldn't help but worry. The timing and location of this 'Witch of the Web' business was just a bit, well, ok, way too coincidental for her liking. She had a distinct feeling that her old friend Shaggy had managed to get himself wrapped right up into whatever was occurring. The man was a magnet for trouble.

And there was also the issue of Velma and Fred. Or, rather, the issue of explaining to them all about Vincent Van Ghoul, the Chest of Demons, the Witch of the Web, and why she and Shaggy had kept all this to themselves for years. She imagined Fred would take it better than Velma. Velma couldn't stand to be left out of the loop, especially in her areas pertaining to her newest obsession: Magic and the supernatural. Daphne supposed she'd just have to deal with it when they came to it, and hope her friends didn't get too offended.

"Hey, a town!" Freddie suddenly exclaimed, voice filled with childlike glee. "Think we should stop, take in some local colour?" The blonde always had been enamoured with small towns and villages. Each one stood out to him as a distinct microcosm of humanity, unique in its own way with its own customs and rituals and colours. For him, each place visited and each person met was a new chance for friendship and adventure.

"Sure, why not?" Daphne was less fond of such places. While they had often been a gateway to new mysteries, it usually came with a price, be it in the form of a lack of simple conveniences like running water, or in the form of lycanthropic townsfolk chanting 'one of us, one of us'. Still, it would make Fred happy to stop by, and perhaps she could subtly glean some information about the Barren Bog from the locals.

Freddie parked the car on the side of the main thoroughfare that ran through the tiny town. Daphne made a token effort to let Nivicolum out to stretch her wings, but the bird wanted only to be left alone to sleep. This was quite alright with the redhead.

The town was caught somewhere between quaint and ramshackle, desperately clinging to a prosperity, or at least a lack of decline, that it had enjoyed until not long ago. The businesses were obviously ailing, even here on the central road, the small signs of wear and tear pointing to a slow drain and a careful appropriation of funds to that which was needed to keep open, to the neglect of all else.

Something had happened here. Something that frightened the residents and drove a good portion of them away, along with whatever tourists the town had once courted. Daphne smiled despite herself; as much sympathy as she felt for the people here, she was glad to know that her detective skills hadn't vanished from disuse.

Freddie, however, simply smiled, not at all bothered by the economic decay on display. He took a great big breath of the humid, warm Louisiana air and then let it out with a sigh of contentment, stretching his arms. He took a casual glance about, and noticed at once that there wasn't a soul to be seen.

"Huh." He blinked, nonplussed, before reverting back to a smile. "Guess everyone's staying out of the heat." As hot as it was outside, probably hovering around eighty degrees Fahrenheit, Daphne seriously doubted that this was the reason for the unsettling lack of life. Silently, she hoped that it had nothing to do with her mission from Van Ghoul. The town looked to have been in decline for a few years now, so her _current_ task was probably unconnected, but she wasn't convinced that the late Witch of the Web was uninvolved. If only a certain sorcerer had provided her with a more accurate timeline of events than 'A witch existed at some point, gets powerful, then dies.'

"Why don't we check out the general store, Fred? See if they they have a more accurate map." This town didn't even appear on the map they were using, and Daphne was eager to see what else was missing from it. She stuck it in Freddie's back pocket and they went inside.

* * *

><p>He knew he'd lost a good chunk of his sanity when everything died. Even though he wasn't the most learned man, he could tell during his lucid moments that he'd picked up more than one mental disorder along the way. He heard things. He saw things. He <em>felt<em> things. Thing that were not and could not. He lost time, in huge chunks of days or weeks or months. It was hard to tell out in the wilds. He was starving constantly, but the thought of actually eating anything repulsed him far more than the hunger pangs motivated him to do so. And he never, ever slept.

Telling his delusions from reality was trying during his bouts of lucidity, but totally impossible at any other time. When he roamed the bog, lost in his various psychoses, everything he saw and heard and felt was the absolute truth. The dying screams of countless animals echoing in his mind were actually echoing _around_ him. The gnarled, massive talons his hands had twisted into _really did_ clink like bone on bone. And he _knew_, without a single doubt, what his bog was feeling. Those ever more rare times when he doubted the reality of these, those were truly the times when he was insane.

He slid through the muck of the bog, silent and ethereal as a wraith. The animals, his animals, paid him no mind as he passed amoung them; they knew they had nothing to fear from him. He couldn't feel his legs, wasn't entirely sure he had them, but he kept moving regardless. That which disturbed the bog was not far now.

The breath left him in a constant stream, rolling from his mouth like fog, the chill in him chilling the flowing mist. He had no lungs, his chest was hardly more than a ribcage with rotting meat and plants in it, but he continued to expel the fog without ceasing, not knowing or caring what made it draw through him. In the Louisiana heat, this produced an endless coating of water across his front, dripping from his beard and exposed bones. The fungus nestled in his stomach cavity appreciated this. He sometimes wished he could close his mouth to block the fog, but the missing chunk of his lower jaw made such action impossible.

He didn't know what he would do when he found the disturbance. His mind seemed pulled in varying directions on the matter. A large part of him simply wanted to destroy whatever the anomaly was and be done with it. Another part mused that he should simply remove it without harming it; the bog had seen enough destruction, after all. A third, wiser part, told him to hold off on deciding what to do until he knew what he was dealing with. He listened to that one.

For now.

* * *

><p>The interior of the general store was as silent as the outside, though Daphne was pretty sure this was more due to their own arrival than it being the natural state of things. The old man behind the counter, staring at them with open surprise, seemed to back this up. He was a wiry fellow, all long limbs and loose skin. Between the wrinkles, white hair, and spectacles, his age was apparent, though he wore it well.<p>

"Hi there!" Fred greeted him with a friendly wave. This seemed to bring the man back to reality.

"Well, ah, hello there yourselves!" He smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt and plastered a hopeful grin across his face. "Been two blue moons since ol' Eli had any new customers. What can I do for you?" He leaned forward on the counter eagerly.

"We could use a new map, for starters." Daphne answered, before Freddie could start asking about local legends and bogeymen. Supplies first, colour second. She took a quick glance around the place. It was very orderly, not a single thing out of place along the low shelves that formed the aisles and not a single smudge on the wood floors, though Eli likely had little better to do than keep the place spotless these days. Though, she noted that the mannequin near the back had seen better days. No maps were sitting where she could see them. "Do you have any?"

"As a matter of fact," Eli swung an arm out in front of him. "I do, young lady." He pointed behind the couple, to the side of the door they'd entered through. Sitting on a little spinning rack, in plain sight, was a collection of maps. "Got everything from country-wide to state to local. Got a few trail maps, too, if you kids are into hiking."

"Thanks." Daphne went over to check through the rack. Fred, confident that she had it under control and having no desire to look at a bunch of paper, poked about the shelves. There were the usual sorts of things one might expect from a store in a town like this: Trail-mix, first-aid kits, flashlights, assorted candies, and the like. The blonde did notice, however, that there seemed to be quite a few other items that one might expect from a more specialized store. Multi-tools, fishing rods, canteens, some rather large knives, water purification tablets, and other sundries that were usually home in a hunting and camping shop. For the general store to be carrying these items, they would have to be pretty popular with the usual visitor to town. Apparently, this place had been a popular stop for people going... somewhere. Looking at a bunch of paper now seemed much more interesting to Freddie.

"Hiking, huh?" He asked casually, going over and picking up one of the trail maps. Something about it seemed off. Daphne raised an eyebrow at him; she noticed it too.

"Yessir." Eli nodded. "Lots of good spots for hiking, camping, general enjoyment of nature, that sort of thing. I've got everything you might need for a weekend getaway in the wilds right here." Not a subtle pitch, but the man was obviously hurting for business.

"Really?" Fred took the map over to the counter and spread it out. "Which ones are the best for a day trip, you think?" Daphne sauntered over as well, already realising the difference, but unwilling to let Fred know that.

"Ah, well," Eli hemmed and hawed for a bit, before tracing a finger along a trail. "For just a day trip, heading over to the spring here is always nice. Terrain is forgiving, the path is pretty clear, and it isn't too far from that hotel there, so you can spend all day out and not have to travel far to put up for the night."

"Hmm." Freddie pretended to mull this over. Sometimes, Daphne was rather surprised at how cunning her boyfriend could be when he was rooting out a mystery. "What about here?" He tapped a finger at the center of the sprawling area labeled 'Barren Bog'. Eli made a worried face, but covered it quickly.

"Certainly no place for hiking." He assured the blonde. "Nothing but muck and snakes and mosquitoes."

"Huh, that's weird." Fred blinked in false realisation, pulling the map from his back pocket. "Our map calls it Bannon Swamp. Why the name difference?" Eli blanched.

"Uh, well, y'see," He stuttered. "Buncha folks from the college up the way came down and took a look at the place and, uh, technically, it's actually a bog, so they changed the name."

"Dôn fib at 'um." Daphne and Freddie jumped at the sudden new voice, quickly glancing around for the source. It took the couple a moment to realise that it was coming from the _mannequin_. The not-mannequin pushed away from the wall and slowly walked over. He kept his head down, and the wide brim of his hat covered his face. Eli frowned with irritation.

"Wasn't saying a thing wrong." He insisted curtly. The hatted man finally looked up, giving Eli a sidelong stare. Daphne couldn't say if he was thirty or sixty, the lines of stress and fatigue were so heavy on his face. His unkempt beard was streaked with grey, but his blue eyes were still sharp enough to slice right through a person. His clothes reminded her of the French fur-trappers she'd seen in history books. Judging from this and his unique accent, Daphne guessed he was a Cajun.

"Was talkin' at dem." The Cajun turned his gaze to the couple. "Dey ain't here for any hikin'." His eyes narrowed. "Dey's here for de Beast o' de Bog." Eli sputtered in surprise for a moment, before focusing his ire at Daphne and Fred.

"That so? More upstarts looking for a thrill?" He huffed. "Well, forget it. There's nothing out there for you, so just go on home, you hear?" Freddie opened his mouth to contest this, or perhaps ask just what the Beast of the Bog was, but the Cajun cut him off.

"Dat's de problem wit you kids," He looked Daphne directly in the eye. "You all is incredibly predictable." When her eyes widened in recognition, he gave her a slight nod and continued. "You want to go down to de Bog so much? I'll take you. You gon' go anyway, you might should stick wit someone who knows what he's doin'." With that, he strode from the store. Daphne was quick to follow.

"Freddie," She said as she stood in the doorway. "Buy all the supplies we'll need for a trip to the Bog. I think we've found the local colour."

* * *

><p>The Barren Bog was quiet. Velma had spent quite a bit of time during the last four years in various woods and forests and other such biomes, and knew quite well that it wasn't unusual for things to quiet in the presence of a human. Utter silence, however, was another matter entirely. It wasn't natural. She could almost taste the magic infused into this place.<p>

"What happened here?" She looked to Shaggy, who was glancing about nervously, one hand resting on Scooby's head. He shrugged.

"As far as I know, it's always been, like, creepsville out here." He paused, frowning to himself in thought, then began to walk through the dead trees. "Like, this way."

"It used to be a lot more lively." Phantasma chipped in, floating backwards in front of Velma. "But everything went quiet a little while before Coach Shaggy came to us the first time." The withered trunks she passed through did little to muffle the ghoul's voice, interestingly. (Perhaps her voice was more psychic emanation than sound waves.) "It was probably _her_ doing." Velma frowned to herself as she followed along; pronouns given that sort of inflection were rarely good things.

"And she would be?" The researcher prompted.

"The Witch..." Phantasma said somewhat dramatically, wiggling her fingers. "Of the Web!" As over the top as the phantom was being, this was important information to Velma. That the girl would use the witch's title, but not her name, said that there was still something in this place that held to the witch's sway. Names had power, after all, and even long gone beings were sometimes safer referred to by title when there was old magic about.

"Ugly piece of work." Elsa commented, falling into stiff-legged step beside her. "Wanted to rule the world (Of course, thought Velma, they always did.), using us as her generals." The golem shook her head. "Mind control, army of demonic bats, giant beasts, powers all focused into a single object, all the stuff you usually see out of the stupid and powerful." She shrugged. "Still, she almost had us."

"Mind control fail at a critical moment?" Velma guessed. There were reasons why the smart magic users never tried to just mind control their way to planetary conquest, after all. Minds were slippery things, and outright control over even one person was difficult to maintain.

"Thanks to the Coach and Scooby." Phantasma giggled. "Otherwise, thing would have gotten pretty _revolting_!" She held it for a moment, then broke into cackles. Velma was sure that 'revolting' was a pun, though she wasn't sure how. She was only mildly surprised to find that Shaggy and Scooby had squared off against an apparently powerful witch and come out on top; the two were basically walking spanners that threw themselves headlong into the works of bad guys. She doubted the gods themselves (if such beings existed, which, in light of the surface she'd been scratching at for the last four years, she wasn't ruling out) could successfully put together a plan that those two couldn't accidentally send awry.

"That," Elsa agreed wryly. "And a healthy dose of general incompetence and being suicidally overconfident. A _lock_ on her secret passage is all it would have taken to keep her plans from... exploding in her face." The girl, bless her, managed to look slightly apologetic for the pun. Velma couldn't work up proper annoyance for this one, if only because it gave her some new information. The witch probably wouldn't be bouncing back from an exploded face any time soon.

"Alright," The Occult Hunter looked up ahead to Shaggy and Scooby, who were still making steady progress forward. "I assume that we're heading to this witch's old haunt?" Man and his best friend didn't answer, though a collective shudder of fear ran though them.

"Yep." Phantasma confirmed in their stead. "Coach Shaggy and Miss Grimwood figure that the castle is the most likely source of..." She paused, uncertain whether or not she could divulge the recent goings on. "What's been happening lately."

"There's a castle out here?" Such a thing seemed unlikely to Velma. Surely any castle built here would just sink into the swamp. (And any castle built atop the first would burn down, fall over, and then sink into the swamp, of course. Perhaps this castle was the third.) She supposed that magic might allow one to be built safely, but it would take far, far more than one witch to pull off such a feat.

"Was a castle." Shaggy suddenly spoke, stopping abruptly. He sounded surprised. "It's, like, gone." Velma walked up next to him and peered out at the former castle site. It lay in ruins. Nothing but stones, bones, and blood. In that moment, she was taken by a feeling. An instinct. One that had burned into her awareness in the darkness of the caverns.

Something, some _thing_, was stalking them.


	8. Chapter 8

****I just realized that Abraham's dialogue probably messed with the word count on this one quite a bit. *shrug*

Responses:

Scoobyfan1 - I'm not sure fun really factored into the... drifting. It was really more of a matter of there simply being no more mysteries for them to solve, due to all the competition. Mysteries basically became 'I Love Lucy', and only so many people can get to watch the tapings, if you'll excuse the American-centric metaphor.

SoI'llKillYou - I'll probably get into it in the story itself, but trust me when I tell you that it's far darker than simply finding him attractive. All the ghouls feel serious attachment to Shaggy, but Vampires don't have the same emotional spectrum as everyone else.

Lord Xanatos - Scrappy was sold to a farm where he'll be much happier. Or maybe he just went back to live with his mom.

Bookworm Gal - If only it were so simple as all that... The web stretches far...

**8**

"Who are you?" Daphne demanded of the Cajun the moment they were out of earshot. "How do you know Van Ghoul?"

"Abraham." The man said simply, tipping his hat. "And dass non your bus'ness, sha. He just told me to be here on dis day and to take you wit me to da Bog."

"He didn't tell you anything else?" The heiress pressed, though she was familiar enough with Van Ghoul's methods to know it was probably futile.

"Just da pass phrase," Abraham rumbled, looking mildly annoyed. "And to answer any questions you asked. Dat vieux don like details much." He shook his head and started down the road. Daphne looked back at the store or a moment, before stepping quickly to catch up with him.

"He's got a serious information-sharing problem." She agreed. "Just what can you tell me about the Bog?" He glanced at her, the annoyance on his face ramping up a notch. Apparently, he hadn't expected her to actually follow him.

"Whatchu wanna know?" He pulled his eyes back ahead and spoke to her without looking back her way. Daphne frowned.

"Tell me about the Witch of the Web." She didn't know how much time she had before Fred finished purchasing supplies and caught up with them, so she decided to go for the most important info first.

"Don know much about her." Abraham shrugged. "Got a idea dat she's da one what put da gris gris on da whole place, but who knows. Before she came 'round, da Bog was a swamp, wit green leaves and animals. Now, it's nuttin but mud, bebettes, and da Beast."

"You mentioned that inside." The redhead recalled. "What is the Beast?"

"Da Beast..." They were already walking slowly, but Abraham slowed down even more now, narrowing his eyes. "It showed up 'boud a mont after da Witch's place went boom. It's a creecha like nuttin I ever before saw."

"You've seen it?" With bog monsters and the usual fare, most everyone had 'seen' them at one point or another, but Daphne was inclined to take the Cajun at his word.

"Weh." He nodded. "Dat ting's been makin' all of us da misere since it showed up. Why tink you dis is such a ghost town?" Daphne hesitated before asking her next question, but plowed ahead.

"You've seen it, personally?" She raised her hands placatingly when Abraham turned to glare at her from the corners of his eyes. "Standard question!"

"I've seen it." He growled. "I been tryin' to kill it since da day it showed up." He looked away from her and picked up the pace considerably. "But nuttin works. Not bullets, or knives, or poison. Tried fire, but da chôse wouldn' catch. I'm takin' some molotovs dis time." The heiress found this to be disturbing, for obvious reasons.

"Oh." She blinked. She began to wonder if Van Ghoul hadn't merely been completely senile in his old age. First the owl from Hell, and now he had assigned as a guide a man who thought tossing about firebombs in the middle of a heavily wooded area was an appropriate way to fight monsters. Perhaps her next contact would do away with all subtlety and simply be an actual psychotic, demonic hellspawn. "I should probably get back to Fred." She said with slight unease. "Where should we meet you?"

"My house, just down da road." Abraham pointed. "Be hard to miss; it's da only one wit a vehicle in da driveway."

"Right." Daphne began to back away in the direction they'd come. "Nice meeting you!" She offered, then turned and walked as quickly as possible, desperate to put some distance between herself and the crazy Cajun. He didn't respond.

* * *

><p>Velma, with some effort, forced down the immediate panic response. Slowly, trying to appear as though she were merely giving the place a casual scan, she turned in a small circle. The others didn't appear to have noticed anything. Elsa and Phantasma were chatting with each other amicably as they poked about, while Shaggy looked about as nervous as she would expect him to be out here. Scooby seemed more interested in snuffling at the dirt than anything around them, but Shaggy <em>had<em> mentioned that the Dane and the dragon had been spending a lot of time out here. She strained her hearing, attempting to block out the chatter, and heard nothing. She shuddered lightly; the grave-like silence was still just as unnerving has when she'd first heard it.

"Is it always this quiet?" She asked no one in particular, voice barely above a whisper. The others had no trouble hearing her.

"Why'd you think it was called 'Barren' Bog?" Elsa's normal speaking tone was almost booming here. Velma flinched at the volume, feeling an irrational surge of anger towards the golem for breaking the quiet. Elsa merely frowned in confusion at her glare, then turned back to her conversation with Phantasma. They spoke much more quietly now, sending looks in the researcher's direction.

Ignoring the pair, Velma continued to look about. The crumbled stone was a mix of light grey and jet black, and the way it lay reminded her of some of the rockslides she'd seen the last few years, though there was no hill or mountain in immediate sight that it could have come from. She paid little attention to it, moving her gaze in a sweep of the tree line. Nothing but more of the same dead trees and dry ground. Perhaps her feeling really was just a feeling. Still, all this blood had to come from somewhere...

She bent down, examining the nearest splattering. She well knew that she wasn't the most talented tracker in the world, but she'd always paid attention to the actions of her various guides (as well as asked nonstop questions, to the irritation of some and amusement of others) and had picked up a thing or two along the way. She was fairly certain that this blood was less than twenty-four hours old. Judging by the amount, it had to have come from more than one animal. At least, she hoped it had been animals.

The ground was torn up rather messily, hinting at a mad scramble for safety, and she saw what she thought were hoof prints in a few places. Likely, some deer were sleeping in the shelter of the rocks when a pack of predators found them. She was relatively certain that small deer sometimes lived in bogs, anyway. She shivered; if the feeling in the back of her mind was anything to go by, whatever had attacked them was still around.

"We should, like, keep going." Shaggy's voice, despite the fact that he had the sense to speak quite softly, was like a gunshot in the quiet. He was glancing around uneasily, and Velma could tell he had begun to feel stalking presence. Well, at least it wasn't her imagination, then. She wasn't sure whether to consider that a good or bad thing.

"Where to?" She walked up next to him so she could keep her voice as low as possible. "Are there more remains of the castle?" He glanced down at her momentarily, then continued to look about as before.

"Like, I don't know," He confessed. "But, something tells me we need to split this scene, like, pronto."

"Yeah," Phantasma suddenly appeared at her coach's side, making both humans jump. She seemed to not notice. "That castle was huge; there's gotta be more left of it than just this!"

"These chunks were probably thrown from the mountain by the explosion." Elsa added, making a strong effort to bring her volume down. Velma appreciated that.

"Mountain?" She asked as they all began to walk deeper into the bog. "This bog has a mountain?" Bogs, by and large, were not homes to mountains. The researcher could only assume that the Witch had created it, presumably to perch her castle upon. More evidence that she hadn't been working alone.

"Yep." Elsa nodded, throwing her arms wide. "What kind of evil conqueror would she be if she wasn't taking over from a mountain fortress?" A smart one. You didn't have a long, successful evil career by being easy to find, after all.

"Ah," Velma nodded. "Of course." She wondered if evil magic-users followed cliches on purpose, perhaps out of some odd sense of tradition, or if they honestly thought they were using solid, original strategies. Then again, it could also be a result of pride, wanting to succeed where others-

The world stopped, and twisted.

The air turned to curved glass, distorting Velma's sight and throwing off strange reflections. She took a moment to realise that she was seeing the lenses of her glasses, rather than through them. With a touch of difficulty, she looked beyond them. She would have cared about such a thing, but something far more important demanded her attention. Elsa was moving in slow motion, completely unaware of anything being amiss. Her voice was impossible to hear, drowned out as it was by a deep, slow, steady thrum, accompanied by a sound akin to a waterfall, in the researchers ears. A dust mote was suspended in place between the women, looking to Velma as if it were under a magnifying glass. The trees beyond Elsa were impossibly reversed in perspective, the closest ones being nearly twig-thin and featureless with great gaps between them, while the distant trunks were so large and detailed that she could reach out and touch them.

None of these things, however, were what had caught her focus. There, by a distantly near tree, something spied her. Something dark, motionless, and hungry. She couldn't even make out a general shape of the thing, for it seemed to shift even as it was still. The only clear detail she was able to see pinned her in place, boring into her intently: A single, red eye. It stared. She blinked, and it was gone.

Reality ensued.

Velma stumbled over her own feet. She nearly hit the ground, but Phantasma grabbed her by the arms and hoisted her upright. The cold of the phantom's touch was incredibly welcome, even if it only made the researcher aware of how hot she suddenly felt. Her breath felt constricted, and she reached up to remove her neck-guard, only to remember that it wasn't there when her hand clutched her collar.

"You alright, Ms. Dinkley?" She barely heard the girl's words through the pounding of her heart and her own breathing. She couldn't focus on them, as she was too consumed with the sudden ache in her bones. She fell to her knees, and it jarred her injured shoulder, causing it to flare sharply with pain. Her airways opened up as she gasped, only to squeeze tight once more in a coughing fit.

"Velma." She felt Shaggy's hand rest on her back as she doubled over, and was grateful for the relative coolness that radiated from it. "Easy now..." He'd done the same thing when she'd had a nasty stomach bug six years ago, though she doubted he realised it. The rest of the gang had been in a mad scramble to make sure she had the best possible care and remedies, all of which were homemade and supposedly the guaranteed thing to cure her, but Shaggy had simply sat with her quietly, rubbing her back sympathetically while she threw up her guts.

Well, at least she wasn't throwing up this time. Yet.

Eventually, the coughing wound down and she was able to regain a regular, if painful, pattern of breathing. Shaggy''s hand left her, only to present her with a bottle of water a moment later. Despite the fact that holding her breath made her lungs scream, she emptied most of the water in one pull. Her inflamed and raw throat thanked her. The pain in her shoulder had faded to a dull ache, while only a ghost of the pain in her bones remained.

"...the Hell was that?" She whispered, wincing at the way it bothered her throat.

"Like, I don't know." Shaggy placed his hand on her good shoulder, staring at her with intent concern. "You were fine one minute, then you, like, started coughing outta the blue." That was about how she remembered it, too. Scooby cautiously nudged at her hand with his nose, looking up at her with his big brown eyes, and she gave him a smile, scratching between his ears.

"So much for a clean bill of health." She took another sip of water. Granted, she was pretty certain that her little fit had nothing to do with her health and everything to do with whatever it was that was stalking them, but something told her that it would be a good idea to keep that to herself. Only she and Shaggy seemed to have any awareness of it, and that fact, if she was correct it believing it, spoke volumes about the thing's nature. (Something that humans could sense, but animals and the undead couldn't? Not a long list.) She had to confirm it, and determine what they were dealing with.

"We should head back to school." Elsa suggested, wrapping a massive hand around Velma's arm and helping her up. "I mighta missed something and, really, you shouldn't be out here anyway since you still haven't fully..." She trailed off uncertainly as Velma shook her head.

"I'm alright." The researcher assured the group at large. "We're out here already, so we might as well," She swallowed to try and remove some of the needling sensations in her throat. "Ugh, might as well finish poking around the castle. And _you_," She gave Shaggy a pointed stare. "Are going to finally tell me what this whole mystery is about." There was a moment of silence as the ghouls exchanged unsure glances, before all eyes turned to Shaggy.

"Uh, like, ok, I guess." He shrugged. "You sure you're up for some more walking?" Velma gave him a flat stare.

"Unless you're going to carry me." She thought for roughly half of a second. "That was sarcasm." She clarified before Elsa or Shaggy could make a move (Which she just knew they would.). "I can walk." She nodded in the direction they'd been traveling. "Lead on, and fill me in on everything."

* * *

><p>"Uh, I guess this is it?" Freddie furrowed his brow, frowning at the abandoned-looking house. The yard was long overgrown, and more than one window set in the front of the single-story building was cracked. The mailbox stood open and overflowing with neglected post.<p>

"I guess." Daphne echoed, eyes roaming over the place with distaste. Why couldn't mysteries ever happen in tidy locations? "That's the only vehicle around." 'That' being a pickup truck that was more rust, dents, and gouges than actual truck. If imperfections were gold, the truck would probably weigh as much as a tank. She doubted it even worked.

"Yep." Fred grinned. Going to see a creepy man in his creepy house about a trip to the creepy bog to try and find a monster? Yeah, the blonde was loving every moment of this. At least one of them was. "I'll go knock." He leapt from the jeep, too excited to remember to take the keys with him, and marched through the tall grass. Daphne pocketed the keys, rolling her eyes, and followed after him. He was already banging on the door by time she'd picked her way through the grass. The whole frame rattled with each knock.

"It's open." Came Abraham's annoyed voice from inside. The couple shared a momentary glance, and Daphne led the way in.

The inside was... well used, to put it politely. The front door opened to what Daphne assumed was at one point a living room, but was now something more of a workshed with a sofa. Though Freddie was behind her, she could practically see the look of wonder on his face as he took in the room. Almost every available surface, from the floor to the sofa to a little work table, was covered in unarmed traps.

Abraham sat on the only clear space on the sofa, his hat and furs slung over the back of it, paying the couple little heed as he fiddled with some kind of bear trap.

"Whoa," Fred immediately set about touching and picking up things he shouldn't. "This is a Sleepy Creek number six! I thought they stopped making these." Abraham looked up from his work for a moment, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"Dey did." He said simply, before turning back to his trap.

"Hey, an MB 750 Wolf Plus!" Fred gushed excitedly. "I've heard these are really popular in Alaska." He explained, holding it up for Daphne to see.

"Dey are."

"And these look like they use to be part of a moose trap, one of the really high-end brands."

"Dey were." Abraham looked back up, fixing the blonde with an appraising stare. "You know a ting or two 'boud traps, uh?"

"Well," Fred's voice instantly filled with pride. "I've built my fair share of traps over the years. And I own every issue of Traps Quarterly. And I've held a couple panels at Trapcon. And I design all the traps for my show. And-"

"Freddie's very enthusiastic about traps." Daphne cut in before her boyfriend could really get started.

"I don watch TV." The Cajun said flatly. "But, it sounds like you got some skill." He held up the trap in his hands. "Wassamatter wit diss?"

"Well..." Freddie took the trap and looked it over for a moment, a thoughtful frown crossing his face. "The biggest problem here is that your main spring is too powerful; it looks like someone took a Croc Jaw spring and put it on a bear trap and, since this baby's made of iron instead of steel, the teeth will break if the trap snaps shut empty. And if it shut on something, you'd probably end up just taking off its foot instead of trapping it." He shrugged, handing it back. "I mean, that doesn't really matter anyway, because the bracing arms are too thin the support the full tension of the spring in the first place, so you couldn't actually arm it. And the trigger looks stuck."

Abraham stared in silent shock for a moment, a small noise that was probably meant to be a word squeaking out of his mouth.

"...Probably some rust in there..." Fred suggested awkwardly, a bit unnerved by the older man's reaction. Another moment passed. "A little oil would... probably fix that..."

And then, the Cajun began to laugh. And laugh. And _laugh. _ He dropped the trap, clutching at his sides as he doubled over, hardly able to breathe through his laughing. After a few false starts, he managed to climb to his feet and throw his hand out to grip Fred's shoulder for support. Uneasily, the blonde gave a few chuckles along with him, glancing to Daphne for help. She was a bit at a loss herself.

"Y-you-" Abraham struggled to speak, then suddenly wrapped his arms around Fred in a hug. "Ga lee, j'ai gros couer!" He thumped the younger man's back once, then pulled away, walking towards another room as he slowly brought his laughter under control. "We got so much work ta do." He looked back over his shoulder at the couple, smiling widely. "But first, we eat! I've got such an ahnvee for some boudin; you want some?"

* * *

><p>"...three new girls! That's when Scoob and me, like, split." Shaggy shrugged, embarrassedly avoiding the unamused stares of his students.<p>

"Huh." Velma took a moment to absorb the tale. "So, you meddled a powerful witch _to death_." And here she'd thought that her use of that particular year (she'd been an intern at NASA. Wasn't as interesting as she'd hoped.) was impressive. "That's certainly taking the craft to new heights."

Shaggy rubbed the back of his neck, looking away uncomfortably. Ah, of course. Horribly misshapen and evil witch or not, the gym teacher was partially responsible for ending her life. Velma couldn't imagine that he felt particularly proud of that. Her mind immediately recalled Oakhaven, and Ben Ravencroft. She could only _hope_ that the wannabe warlock was well and truly dead, and not trapped in some limbo with his vile ancestor.

She grabbed Shaggy's hand and held it for a moment, meeting his eyes with a solemn nod. His face twitched in a direction that was likely an attempt at gratitude, but it was only a token gesture that failed to be sustained. He pulled his hand away and increased his walking pace. The ghouls seemed confused, Velma noted. She wondered if it was a general lack of understanding on why death would bother someone, or if Shaggy had never spoken with them, or anyone, about how it affected him. From her personal experience, she guessed it was the latter.

"So," The researcher wanted to move things along, if only to keep Shaggy from dwelling on the topic further. "What made you come back out here, anyway?" The gym teacher paused in his steps for a brief moment, caught off guard by the question, then fell back into pace with a half-shrug and a small smile.

"What can I say?" He nodded towards Phantasma and Elsa. "They, like, needed me." Velma opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. Such an ambiguous answer demanded clarification (That Shaggy had been aware enough of someone else's emotions to realize they 'needed' him was such a huge step up from his usual obliviousness that it in itself required investigation.), but something told her that he was purposely being obtuse and didn't want her to pry. She felt a tiny surge of pride at her realization; it seemed he wasn't the only one learning to read others' emotions. Of course, it was instantly buried beneath worry and curiosity at his desire to keep his reasons for leaving from her.

Velma gave a mental sigh. She'd forgotten how vexing and tiring it was to try and unravel the enigma that was 'other people'. She could only hope it got easier with practice. She shook her head in an attempt to regain her focus. There were bigger puzzles at hand than interpersonal relations.

She hadn't glimpsed the shapeless thing in the distance since the first time, but she could clearly feel that it was nearby. She didn't know if it the feeling was so strong now because she was somehow more attuned to it than before, of if she was simply focusing on it more. As the others gave no reaction to it outside Shaggy's minor discomfort, she doubted that the sensation itself had actual increased in strength (that, or it had only increased in strength towards her, which would be a bad sign.). She had gone over the options in her mind, and had narrowed the nature of the feeling down to two possibilities:

Psychic signal, or instinctual response. The first option was more worrying, as it denoted a certain degree of intelligence and sentience. If it was instead an ingrained, instinctual response on the humans' part, however, then they were far safer; a wild animal, even a supernatural one, wasn't likely to do more than stalk a group their size. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of many creatures that would set off a human instinct without setting off the instincts of a dog as well. And those few would not likely be found in a swamp.

She compiled the data she had. The thing was fast. It was able to be silent. Its form was, to some degree, malleable. It had at least one red eye. It was intelligent enough to stalk a group. It either provoked a human instinct, or it emitted some type of psychic call. Neither the undead nor animals seemed to notice it. It existed in an area that was devoid of other life (And had been devoid of other life for some time, apparently). Or, at least, mostly devoid. That blood had to have come from something. Lastly, it had caused some kind of fit in her through eye contact. That one pointed strongly towards it being psychic.

Thinking on it, she had no clue as to what the thing was. She found this to be quite distressing. She wasn't given the chance to further ruminate on this, however, as Shaggy abruptly halted.

"Um, I think we, like, found the rest of the castle." He let out a disbelieving chuckle. Velma stepped around him to see what had surprised him so, and found herself halting as well.

"Whoa." She breathed. The researcher had seen some ruins in her time, and these were definitely fitting the description. The general shape of what had once been a European-style medieval castle could be made out... if one squinted and turned their head just so, anyway. It certainly resembled what such a castle might look like, though in such a messy, roundabout way that the likeness may well have been pure coincidence. Great grey piles of stone were haphazardly strewn about, in no real meaningful arrangement, surrounded on all sides by jet black spires and hills that must have once been a the mountain. At least a circular mile of swamp had been torn apart by the collapse, dead trees littering the area. The bones of some great beast (Velma could not tell what it may have been, other than absolutely massive) lay partially crushed by a particularly large boulder.

What had probably been a wall was now on its side in pieces, allowing a view into the broken structure. Pretty much everything that could be seen of the lower floors was complete destruction, the impact of the collapse too much for them. The topmost floor, however, looked to be surprisingly intact, perhaps due to having nothing above it save a wooden roof. From where she stood, Velma could almost see a direct path up the rubble and onto the only semi-preserved area. It would take a bit of climbing, something her neck and shoulder would protest heartily, but she was relatively certain she could make it.

"_Nice_ ruins!" Phantasma said appreciatively. For the ghouls, the researcher thought, such destruction must be something like a piece of art.

"Doesn't look like there's much left." Elsa noted. "Might not be too many clues for you guys to find." Velma grinned.

"If it wasn't challenging, it wouldn't be a mystery." A shiver of excitement shot through her at the final word. Mystery. She'd missed it. Hunting down information on the occult and studying the supernatural were fascinating pastimes, but they simply couldn't compare with Mysteries. She looked to the gym teacher. "What do you say, Shaggy? Still remember how to hunt for clues?"


	9. Chapter 9

Bigby the Big Bad Wolf- Sibella can still have a burning hatred for Velma without becoming a villain, don't you worry.

Katerina Riley- I do take a long time to update, yes. I'll do what I can to speed up future updates, but I'm just not a speedy writer at the end of it. Still, unless some tragedy befalls me, updates should continue until the story reaches its conclusion, so you can rest easy there. Also, feel free to go overboard in your reviews as often as you like.

Aryaneragon4ever- Just for you, I'll put Ravencroft in the story somewhere. I can guarantee he'll be a changed man, even.

Everyone else- Thanks for the reviews. Feedback is very important to me, as there's little point in a storyteller telling stories to an empty room, so I'm gladdened by each and every review I get. Please continue to share your thoughts, opinions, and questions with me via reviews.

**9**

"Go! Up! Come on, girl! You can do it!" Velma grit her teeth and focused on the throbbing pain in her neck and shoulder, futilely attempting to ignore her semi-transparent cheerleader. "Use those fleshy, corporeal limbs! You're almost there!"

"Look, I don't mean to be rude," Velma paused her ascent to look up to the top of the collapsed castle, where Phantasma was perched. "But this isn't as easy as it looks, so I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't distract me." The phantom threw her hands over her mouth embarrassedly.

"Sorry." She giggled. Luckily, from this distance, the higher tones of her voice were somewhat muted by the light breeze blowing through the area. The ghoul leaned back and began kicking her legs idly, not speaking further.

"Thank you." Velma turned her attention back to the precarious climb. She really did need her full focus, as the pile of rubble was still rather crumbly, despite the years it'd had to settle. Naturally, she nearly slipped right off a ledge when Phantasma suddenly yelled down to her again a few minutes later.

"I don't suppose you could speed things up?" The spirit asked impatiently, a hint of a whine in her voice. Velma took a moment to bring her irritation under control, then shouted back up.

"Look, if you're in such a hurry," She said icily, pausing to heft herself up another few feet. "You could lower a rope or a tree branch or," She reached out for a handhold, only to have it disintegrate before she could put any weight on it. (Better than having it crumble after she put weight on it, she supposed.) "Or find _something_ useful to do."

"I could do that!" Phantasma brightened, then turned thoughtful. "There's some rope up here, but I don't think you would accept my help, since it could accidentally fall right through my ghostly fingers."

"That does put a damper on our relationship." The researcher agreed.

"But," The ghoul held up one finger. "I promise to not drop the rope until after you reach the top."

"That's very comforting," Velma said flatly. "But, I'm afraid you just have to wait." The phantom sighed with overblown annoyance.

"I hate waiting..." Phantasma huffed, before seeming to realize something. "I could give you my word as a spirit...?"

"No good." Ah, this handhold seemed stable. "I've known too many spirits."

"There's no way you'll trust me?" The ghoul deflated sadly.

"Nothing comes to, hup," Velma hauled herself up another step. "To mind..."

"I swear," Phantasma clenched her fist defiantly. "On the grave of my father, the Phantom Shadow, you _will_ reach the top alive."

"...Throw me the rope." With that, Phantasma vanished from the ledge. Velma turned her attention back to the task at hand. As amusing a diversion as that had been (Shaggy's midnight movies, it seemed, had some classics amoung their number), she still had a bit of a climb before her.

"Incoming!" Phantasma's voice suddenly rang out. The researcher reflexively pressed herself up against the wall of rubble, throwing an arm over her head. After a moment of not being pummeled by falling stones, she opened her eyes to a surprising sight.

"There was actually rope up there?" She laughed, disbelievingly, and grabbed the cord dangling beside her. Her incredulous grin instantly turned into a confused frown. The rope was no rope, but an incredibly long, dried-out vine. What would that have been doing up there?

"Well, yeah." Phantasma called down. "Why would a say there was rope if there wasn't?" Perhaps Shaggy's movies were not classics after all.

"I thought we were, uh," Velma gave the vine an experimental tug, and it snapped right off in her hand. "...doing a bit. Great." She allowed the useless plant to fall from her grasp with a sigh. "Hey, Phantasma," She looked up to the ghoul. "Why don't you go see if Elsa's found anything?"

"Uh," The phantom looked to the broken vine in her hand for a moment, before dropping it with an embarrassed laugh. "Good idea, Miss Dinkley." She dove from the ledge, shooting past the researcher, and flew off to find her schoolmate. Velma resumed climbing in blessed peace.

* * *

><p>Elsa had opted to not attempt to scale the rubble, and was instead searching the area around the base of the broken castle. It wasn't that she lacked the strength or endurance needed for the climb, she had plenty of both, but more an issue of her anatomy. Specifically, she rather disliked bending her knees. It was an imperfection that could be traced directly back to her father's own construction. A brilliant man though he was, her father's creator was not beyond making mistakes, and one of his chief ones had been the knees. Just a bit of extra tendon behind each knee, meant to help bear the weight of her father's tree-trunk legs, resulted in a painful pinching sensation and, in turn, his signature stiff-legged walk. When he later built her, using his own slightly modified blueprints as the template, he hadn't thought to address this problem, having become used to it himself.<p>

As such, climbing was not a pleasant activity for her.

Still, there was plenty of clue-hunting to be done at ground level. Scooby was to accompany her, as being a dog put him at a disadvantage when it came to climbing as well, but the food-oriented Dane had happily settled himself amoung the giant bones and was quite content to stay there and snack. Elsa did not hold this against him, as she doubted he'd ever seen such a feast of bones in his life.

"Hey! Hey, Elsa!" Besides, it was pretty much impossible to be lonely with Phantasma about. "How's it goin'? Find any clues?"

"Not really." The golem shook her head. "Some more blood."

"Yuck." Phantasma stuck her tongue out. "Meat creatures are filled with way too many juices. Er, no offense." Elsa ignored the accidental slight.

"Any idea what we're actually looking for?" She held up a hand, as if she would somehow have the information physically handed to her. "I can't tell what's a clue and what's just stuff."

"Hmmmm." The phantom thought deeply for a moment. "I have no idea." She shrugged, then smiled. "I guess I haven't _got a clue!__Hahahaa!_" Elsa gave a short chuckle in response, not bothered by the screeching laugh.

"This is a lot harder than Coach Shaggy's stories made it sound." The huge woman frowned. "Maybe we're doing it wrong."

"Well... you _did_ find some blood, right?" Phantasma nudged her arm. "That could be a clue." She said, attempting to sound encouraging. Elsa shrugged.

"I guess..." She paused in her walking, turning to look back the way she'd come. "Think I should go take another look?"

"Couldn't hurt." The ethereal girl nodded. "You know, I bet the Coach and Ms. Dinkley haven't found _anything_ yet!"

* * *

><p>"Jinkies, that's a mess." Velma sat herself on a mostly unbroken chunk of stone, taking a moment to recover from her climb as she surveyed the room. It had been several rooms at one point, but most of the dividing walls had collapsed, either when the mountain crumbled or sometime since, making for a very large and very disheveled room. The lack of walls would usually cause some concern about the roof caving in, but was a rather moot point as it had already happened, leaving rotten and broken pieces of wood everywhere. Mixed liberally throughout this were the remains of whatever it was the rooms once held. Lastly, atop everything else, were small piles of dead leaves and bugs that had been blown in by the wind.<p>

Velma was used to sifting through ruined structures by this point, but that was usually when she was relatively certain that what she was looking for was there. Here, there might not be anything to find. Belatedly, she realized that she had no idea what she was even looking for; Shaggy had been working his way towards telling her, but she'd changed the subject when she saw how the witch's death affected him. Well, she'd just have to ask him when he reached the top.

She leaned over to glance down at the lanky man's progress. Still a ways to go. For the sake of safety, Shaggy had waited at the bottom until she'd completed the climb, both to let her, the more experienced climber, forge the path and so that one falling climber couldn't become two. It was strange, watching Shaggy's slow, steady ascent; For all the silly, harmless things that terrified him, he looked completely unafraid of the dizzying height he was pulling himself to. Velma leaned back from the edge.

Even with the nature of the mystery still unknown to her, there were tasks she could set herself to. Task one would be to find something to use as a rope for the descent to ground-level. There were more of the vines laying about, but she knew better than to trust those now. She still wondered why such things would be up here, but that was something that could wait. She kicked some wood out of the way and shifted a few of the smaller stones about, but found little more than destroyed books and broken glass.

She happened upon the chain by chance. After picking up yet another ruined book and tossing it aside, there was a faint _chnk_ when it landed. Knowing well the sounds that books are usually capable of making, Velma picked up on this oddity at once and searched the area where she'd discarded it. The chain, still attached to a bit of wood from the ceiling, was quickly uncovered after that. As far as she could tell from the bits of frame still left and the handled wheel the chain ran to, it had been connected in such a way as to open a sort of drawbridge on the ceiling – a skylight, most likely. A somewhat clever way of doing things in medieval times, perhaps, but rather much overcomplicated in the modern age, when this castle was apparently... conjured. (One would think a powerful witch could just magic the skylight open.)

The chain itself was in relatively good condition, considering it's surroundings. The parts that were more easily uncovered were almost more rust than iron, but the more buried sections, and most of that still wrapped round the wheel, had been protected from the elements and were almost presentable. It seemed, from her tugging and pulling and leaning, that it would still bear a human weight well enough. It was well anchored, too, what with the piles of debris that held the wheel in place. Unfortunately, said debris also kept the wheel from turning, making it a tedious thing to unwind the chain. Still, the annoyance and effort were worth the measure of safety the chain would add to their descent.

So, Velma hefted and pulled, strained and twisted, and and generally fought to finagle the chain from its entrapment. At several points, she was forced to shove her arms into the debris to loose the links from whatever edge or spike they had caught themselves on. She was quite glad now that she'd worn her anti-vampire ensemble, with it's long sleeves and thick gloves, even if it did make her overly warm in the Louisiana weather. Eventually, she could free no more of the chain and a rather large pile lay at her feet, anchored securely to the wheel. She hoped it would be enough to reach the bottom.

"Like, wha-"

With what was most definitely a brave battle-cry (and not a girly shriek in the slightest), Velma whipped around. The chain in her hands, as a matter of physics, whipped with her. Shaggy, with reflexes born from werewolf tag and vampire hide-and-seek, ducked just in time to avoid the free-flying end. Of course, without a beatnik to slow it down, the metal continued in its diagonal arc, building a touch of centrifugal along the way, and quickly approach the next object in its path.

Velma had just enough time to feel like a moron before the chain plowed into the top of her skull.

* * *

><p><em>You will mother the the inheritors of this world. <em>

In an unusual turn for her, Velma realized instantly that she was within a dream. She was standing in the castle, in a time before its ruin. The only light came from the intense blaze in the fireplace, which was blocked only slightly by the large cauldron placed atop the flames. It bubbled and smoked with a thick, black liquid. With the knowledge of one dreaming, Velma knew it to be the blood of the old, the young, the sick, and the strong, extracted from the bellies of bats and boiled for a fortnight – from the night of a new moon, to the night it waxed full. The smell was unbearable.

_You will unite the broken planes._

Tonight was the full moon. The fire died without warning or protest, falling to blackened silence. The skylight, positioned precisely for this moment, slowly lifted open, allowing the moonlight to pour into the room. Where before Velma had been alone, she now found herself surrounded. By rats, and crows, and vermin of carrion. By the rotting corpses of those sacrificed. By _her_.

_You will rise above all others. _

She was... pretty. Her hair was the soft colour of straw newly bundled. Her eyes were wide and earthen, shining with excitement and fear. She stared up into the silver light, lips parted as she breathed deeply of the night. She shuddered in the chill of the fire's absence and watched, captivated, as snowflakes began to drift in through the fully open skylight. Her breath came out in a slow, puffy cloud and she brought her hands up to cup one of the bits of white in her palms. Wonder filled her expression, and she dropped her hands, shrugging out of her simple robe and standing bare in the winter moonlight.

_You will be my child. _

A silver bowl sat on the mantle of the fireplace, and she took it. With a reverence betrayed by her eager smile, she dipped it into the cauldron and filled it. The still-boiling blood steamed against the cold air as she – the woman? Velma? She could no longer tell if she was the one observing the dream or the one being observed – lifted the bowl above her head, trembling with excitement.

_You will be my vessel. _

She upended the boiling liquid, crying out as it scalded her skin and poured across her face and body. Her pale skin was streaked with black wherever the vile liquid touched, but she did not falter. Almost beyond her control, she filled the bowl once more and raised it.

_Kill them._

She screamed as the blood cascaded down once more, her mouth and throat filling with the burning black substance. She collapsed, the silver bowl clattering to the floor, and writhed in agony. Each scream brought a cough. Each cough a scream. Try as her body might, the liquid would not be dislodged. She had stained herself black, both inside and out.

_Bathe in their blood._

She wanted it to stop, _needed_ it to stop. Her breath was a wheezing, thin thing that couldn't sustain her. Her left eye was burned shut. The cold air both comforted and tortured her, cooling her skin and cracking it at once. Her working eye searched about frantically for some escape, but only found the empty sockets of the grinning dead. She had no choice.

_Show me your devotion. _

She pulled herself up the side of the cauldron, her skin sizzling and peeling away against the heated metal. She plunged her arms deep into the liquid. The cauldron tipped.

_Show me your pain._

If her legs were broken when the heavy iron cauldron landed upon them, she truly did not notice it. Her world became awash with black pain as the blood covered her. Surrounded her. Boiled into her eyes, into her skin. Cooked her alive. By some cruel miracle, she did not drown in it. Her mind fled, and she was not but a mewling, trembling, broken creature of helpless pain. She could not move. She could not call for help. She could not even pray for death.

_On the day of the crossroads, show me your true path._

In some part of her awareness, she heard the clap-clop-clap of hooves on the stone. Though she had no eyes to see, she knew that there loomed just over her a man that was not a man. A man whose skin was blacker than her own, with neither hair nor weakness.

"**Oh yes, foolish little witchling."** The voice cut through the pain. Cut to the bone. It slid like oil and choked like poisonous fumes. **"You, I think, will do nicely." **

* * *

><p>"Like, ouch." Shaggy was looking down on her. This in itself was not unusual, though he appeared much taller than Velma recalled. Probably because she was sitting on the floor.<p>

"Wh- what?" The researcher began to shake her head,but stopped when that made her brain throb.

"You alright?" The gym teacher asked sympathetically. "That looked like it hurt."

"Where, no," Velma squeezed her eyes shut, bringing her hands to her head. Images, half-formed and twisting, flickered against her eyelids. "How long was I out?" Shaggy frowned in confusion.

"Uh, like, out?" He puzzled it over, before hazarding a guess. "Zero seconds? Maybe a half a one?" He knelt next to her now, concern setting more fully on his face.

"I was somewhere, no, I _saw_..." What? A vision? A dream? A trauma-induced hallucination? "I don't know. The castle was," She tried to focus on the images, but they were already breaking down to mere wisps. "It wasn't ruined. And there was a cauldron and... snow?"

"Like, in this heat? Man, I wish." Were it any other time, Shaggy's attempt at levity would have been welcome. Now, however, she felt a surge of anger at him for distracting her.

"No! It wasn't... There was..." And the remains of what she had seen were gone. "_Damn it!_" She cursed, anger surging again. Her eyes flew open and she glared at Shaggy, who recoiled in surprise. "That was important!"

"Like, whoa there Velma." His hands came up defensively. "I don't even know what you're, like, talking about!" She knew there was no reason to be mad at him, but, irrationally, she was. Some part of her mind furiously demanded that he understand exactly what she had been trying to articulate, despite the fact that she herself had little idea of what she'd been saying. She hated being irrational, and that irritation funneled directly into the big ball of anger that had fixed itself upon Shaggy.

"Shut up!" She snapped, her feelings churning around her like a thick miasma. She pulled in more with each breath, and her own inability to calm down disgusted her. "Just shut up and let me think for once!" Just a few moments of quiet, that's all she needed. A chance to center herself and regain control of her emotions.

"I-"

"TWO SECONDS!" She exploded, scrambling to her feet. The gym teacher jumped up in response, instantly backing away several steps. "Can't I have just two seconds without you distracting me?" Even as she raged at him, Velma was frightening herself. She could feel herself spiraling out of control, yet she could do nothing to stop it. She had been mad at him in the past, true, had fights filled with harsh words and yelling, but this was different. For one, she'd always had reasons for her anger in the past. Childish, stupid reasons at times, but reasons. Now, her anger was baseless and wild, focused inwards at outwards both. For two, she had lost the ability to walk away.

"Velma," Shaggy's tone betrayed his own feelings: Confusion and hurt. "What-"

"God, what is _wrong_ with you?" Without realising it, she began to advance on him, hands alternating between clenched fists and curled claws. "Does anything I say ever manage to stick to the inside of that empty head of yours?" The gym teacher continued to back away from her, which only incensed her further. "Where the Hell do you think you're going?" How _dare_ he act like she was some big bad monster, and paint himself the victim in the process? "Answer me when I ask you a-"

Her brain put together a sudden picture of the future, granting her a single moment of clarity as everything around her came into a perfect focus. Herself, Shaggy, and their respective paths appeared in her mind like a memory of something just witnessed. Calculations blinked through her thoughts in less than an instant, and her body moved to carry them out before they'd even finished. She dove. Not at Shaggy, but at where she would need to be.

Shaggy, still moving backwards, tripped over a chunk of rubble and tumbled over himself, then off the ledge.

Luckily, she hadn't miscalculated. Her dive took her to a hard landing on her stomach with her hand in the perfect spot to grab Shaggy's wrist as he began to plummet. Her arm, her 'good' arm, was nearly wrenched right from its socket as the weight of the gym teacher suddenly pulled at it, and she was nearly dragged over the ledge after her friend. Only the fact that she had dug her toes deep into the pile of rocks she'd made when uncovering the chain and wheel kept her anchored.

"You _moron_!" She raged at him as he scrabbled for a hold with his feet and free hand. "Do you have any idea how much that hurt?" What was it about being around Shaggy that caused her injury? The only response she received was completely indecipherable through his panicked laughing. "I can't, errgh, hold you up forever, you know!" This was quite true; it was already becoming increasingly difficult to keep her grip on his wrist. Still, if there was one thing Shaggy was good at, it was getting out of jams. It only took him a few moments to cling to the wall like a spider and scramble back over the top, much to Velma's physical relief.

"Y-you..." He panted, one hand clutched to his chest. "You, like, saved my life."

"Really?" She rolled her eyes, rubbing at her newly injured shoulder. "I hadn't noticed." She flashed him a smirk, and abruptly realised that the anger that had filled her only moments before had vanished entirely.

Rather than glad, she found herself troubled by this development. Yes, she had saved Shaggy from a long drop and a sudden stop, but she had been the one to drive him over the edge in the first place, and she didn't even know why. It was only the luck of timing that had saved him. They couldn't afford for her to have any more moodswings like that. The stalking presence in the bog would easily pick apart a group divided by...

The thing in the bog. She could barely feel the oppression of its psychic presence. She focused carefully, but the thing was holding back. As though it were purposefully staying out of sight, or observing the situation from afar.

"Oh... oh bad." Velma had severely underestimated the stalking thing. It was more than just some animal. It was clever, and it was powerful. It didn't want to face the group directly, so it had waited until they'd split up to search for clues. It had waited for her guard to be lowered. Then, it had pumped her full of as much anger as it could.

It had tried to make her kill Shaggy, and had nearly succeeded.. If that had been a mere opening attack, Velma feared what the being would try next. Clearly, the threat had been well and truly established as real, (and this thing, whatever it was, seemed to be beyond her ability to identify) so the time had come to cast secrecy aside.

"I don't want to alarm you," She turned to the gym teacher and tried to keep the worry from her voice. "But we may have a problem..."

* * *

><p>This was insane. Completely, without doubt, certifiably insane. Ten minutes in the Bog and even Freddie could tell that introducing fire to the area would be an act of suicide. There was nothing green or wet in sight, and more dried-out trees than one could, well, shake a stick at. Even the air here seemed to have lost all humidity. It was a miracle that the whole place hadn't been consumed by wildfire already.<p>

And yet, Abraham had refused to leave his molotovs behind, 'just in case'. It was pretty obvious, at least to Daphne, that he was more than willing to kill himself if it meant taking down the Beast of the Bog, and she doubted that he would let their presence get in his way if it came to that. Of course, this was assuming the Beast could stand up to the shotgun, axes, nets, and various traps the Cajun had piled into the truck bed. And assuming that the trap Freddie and Abraham had cooked up failed as well.

As with most of Fred's traps, it was difficult to see the logic of how it worked at first glance. The uniqueness of the intended quarry added to that. There were a great many ropes and pulleys, likely for no more reason than the fact that Fred loved ropes and pulleys in his traps, quite a few teeth taken from bear and fox traps, at least one giant plastic tarp, three tanks of compressed air, wherever Freddie had managed to pull those from, and half a dozen other bits and bobs that barely fit into the bed with the rest. All for a creature that Abraham described as 'half plant, half man, and half animal'. When Daphne had pointed out that there was one half too many, Abraham had decided to cryptically declare that they'd understand once they'd seen the Beast.

Now that they were out here, though, they hadn't seen much of anything. No plants, unless you counted long-dead trees, no animals, no Beast. Not even water, which seemed downright impossible to Daphne when she considered it. Impossible or not, though, they were all piled the front of Abraham's truck, driving along a dry dirt path that should have been under a foot or more of water. Between the heat outside and the fact that the Cajun was wearing his furs again, the cab was mighty uncomfortable.

"How can you be sure it's going to be there?" She asked, not for the first time. She was mildly surprised when he deigned to answer; While Fred's trap-making had gotten him into the Cajun's good graces, Abraham was still annoyed by Daphne's constant questions.

"I'm no, sha." He snorted. "But dass where I find it mos. Maybe it's dere, maybe no. We gon go ro-day up an' down da whole Bog ta find it if we gotta." The place in question was what Abraham claimed to be the remains of the witch's castle, though Daphne had never heard of a witch living in a castle. She wondered why Abraham was so dead-set on killing the Beast, it was obvious that he had some personal hatred towards it, but she knew he wouldn't tell her. At least, not directly.

"You said it showed up about a month after the witch, ah, 'went boom', right?"She prodded. He just shrugged. "Those facts might be connected."

"Maybe." He shrugged again. "Don matta."

"It might." She insisted. "Where was it when you first ran into it?"

"Not dere." He said firmly. Well, that track wasn't getting anywhere.

"Was the place still green back then, or had everything dried up by that point?" He frowned, glancing her way momentarily.

"Wass dat matta?" He asked suspiciously.

"The more we know about the Beast, the more of an edge was have against it." Daphne appealed to his desire to end the creature, hoping that would be enough to make him give a straight answer.

"Was..." He he thought about it. "Was somewhere 'boud a week after everyting was dry..." He didn't continue, much to the heiress's consternation. She was pondering how to get him to keep going, when Freddie stepped in for her.

"So, what happened?" Daphne grinned to herself, grateful for her boyfriend's curiosity.

"By da cabin," Abraham mumbled, more to himself than anyone else. "I was out dere lookin' for..." He shook his head, then focused back on the path, eyes turning hard. "Never you mind."

Abraham clammed up after that, saying not a word no matter what questions Daphne and Fred asked. Still, the little information he'd offered up helped the redhead piece together a slightly better picture of the Cajun. He wasn't here out of pure stubbornness or pride, and he wasn't hunting the Beast out of some abstract sense of preserving the natural order. The creature had wronged him somehow, perhaps by taking or destroying whatever he'd been looking for. That made this a revenge quest, which was something that never ended well. The rule with revenge was, usually, it didn't end until someone died.

The truck came to a halt suddenly. Daphne came out of her introspection, just in time to see something up ahead. It was quick, so much so that she nearly missed it as it darted between the trees. It was also dark, and shifting, making it very difficult to get a good look at it in the moment she had. What she was able to make out, however, as it turned to glance at them before darting away, was one large, red eye.

"After it!" Abraham jumped from the cab and gave chase through the trees, shotgun in one hand and molotov in the other. Daphne and Fred scrambled to keep up. "Beast! Today is your last!"


	10. Chapter 10

****Random Reviewer the 2nd - I'm not sure what you mean by Velma being angsty. The whole tone of the story is a bit darker than the usual feel of the show, so the characters have all been adjusted to fit. While she is having a few emotional moments, that's only to be expected from someone being injured/threatened by vampires/reuniting with an old friend all at once. (Unless you were talking about her little asides. Those are pretty much pure snark.) Also, yes, I spend far too much time on TV Tropes.

Animefan29 - Congrats on being the first person to make that connection. (Or, at least, being the first person to mention to me that you'd made that connection.) To be honest, I've never managed to make it through a Lovecraft story; the descriptions just go on way too long for me. Still, I really like the Cthulhu Mythos universe and Scooby Doo is a classic show from my childhood, so it seemed only natural to mix them. Hopefully, my massive amounts of wiki-ing and research will be able to compensate for my abysmal lack of firsthand knowledge of the style.

Hells Mercenary - Glad ya think so. It's a hard balance to maintain, the original cartoony personalities and a more realistic/mature version. I'm heartened that you think I'm pulling it off.

Katerina Riley - Yeah, well, as much as I like Velma/Shaggy myself, I'm just not confident in my ability to write romance. So, such shipping will likely remain as subtext or light hinting. But, yeah, I really gotta write faster. Two months or more per chapter is redankulous.

To all others, be you reviewers or just readers, I hope you're enjoying the story. Remember, if you have any questions or comments or thoughts or wild theories, just put them in that little box at the bottom of the chapter.

**10**

"So..." Shaggy stared at her for a long moment, no doubt absorbing everything Velma had just told him. "What you're saying is, you're, like, _not_ mad at me?" Ah yes, she could always trust him to cut to the most pressing issue at hand.

"No, Shaggy." The researcher said slowly, shaking her head. "I'm not mad at you. Did you catch anything else I just told you?"

"Of course, yeah." He nodded, bringing up one hand to count off the most pertinent points. "Like, find Scooby and the girls, stick together, find some clues, and, like, get back to the school." Velma gave the gym teacher a flat look over her glasses.

"And the parts about the monster in the bog?" She prodded. He laughed, nervously.

"I was, like, trying to pretend you didn't mention that."

"Of course." While the years had inured him to the girl ghouls, it seemed Shaggy was still as easily frightened by other monsters as he'd always been. In a way, Velma was almost relieved; she wasn't sure her mind could handle the idea of a fearless Shaggy. (Not that she could blame him for being frightened of the stalking thing; she certainly was.)

"So, I'll just, like," Shaggy pulled himself to his feet and stood somewhat near the edge of the rubble-cliff. "Call the girls, then?" He put his fingers to the edges of his mouth, miming a whistle and looking to Velma for confirmation. For a brief moment, self-preservation and curiosity fought in the researcher's head. One one hand, the safest possible thing would be to get back into a group and return to Grimwood's. On the other, there might-could be possible clues in the nearby vicinity maybe.

"Not just yet." As was distressingly usual for Velma, curiosity won. It was a lucky thing she hadn't been born a cat. "I need you to tell me _everything_ that's been going on." The gym teacher blinked at her for a moment, indecisively glancing between her and the land out and below them, before nodding.

"Like, ok." He perched himself upon a rock opposite her. "What do you want to know?" She resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"You came back to the school about four years ago." She prompted. "And everything was fine."

"Uh-huh." He smiled, waiting for her to keep talking. She did roll her eyes this time; apparently, she was going to need to lead him by the metaphorical hand for this.

"You wrote me a letter, asking for me to come help you." She reminded him, a touch forcefully. She didn't mean to be annoyed with him, but he could be clueless at the worst times. "Something prompted you to write it. What was it?" Comprehension dawned across the teacher's face.

"Oh, _that_." He leaned back a bit, nodding a few times. "Like, weird stuff has been goin' down." He brought up one hand. "First, we didn't really notice it, but it, like, it's been getting more and more far out." He rubbed his beard. "Like, it was small, you know? A sound every once in a while, little flashes in the distance, that stuff."

"It didn't stay small, I take it?" Somehow, she doubted he'd have written for help if it had.

"Like, no way. Miss G started picking up on some bad vibes, like _really_ bad juju. They would, like, come and go without any warning, and it really put her on edge. Like, then the girls started seeing something, out in the bog." This, Velma found quite intriguing.

"What kind of thing? Do you mean the thing that, ah, attacked us?"

"Like, I don't think so." He shook his head. "This thing was, like, a guy made of shadow, they said." _Dark, darker than it should have been._ "They said it would just, like, stand at the edge of the treeline and stare at them, then disappear." He shuddered. Velma felt a chill travel up her arms.

"Did... did you ever see it?" Something about this shadow felt familiar, though the researcher couldn't say why. It was not a pleasant familiarity.

"Like, uh-uh. Miss G either." Shaggy looked out over the bog. "That's, like, when things really started getting worse. The sounds got louder, and they happened, like, all the time. They were, like, metal tearing and wood breaking and glass smashing all at once." _Noise. A cacophony._ "And the flashes, they, like, stopped being so far away. You would see 'em in the corners of your eyes and sometimes you would see, like, _things_ in them."

"Monsters?" Her heart was pounding, and sweat pooled upon her brow. She clenched her hands into fists to keep them from trembling. Troubling as she found Shaggy's tale, she couldn't account for her body's extreme reactions to it. She had stronger nerves than this, she was sure.

"Like, places." He rolled his hand in front of him, searching for the proper words to explain. "That we'd been to. People too, like memories or... I don't know." He gave a helpless shrug. "Tanis locked herself in her case for, like, three days when it happened to her. Never found out what she saw." His hand came up and ran through his hair once, then lay upon his knee and began tapping. "Like, must 'a been pretty bad."

"What about you?" She was probably prying a bit too much, but her curiosity cared little for trying to discern the blurry lines of politeness in matters of supernatural visions. "What did _you_ see?" He paused, then gave a little shrug.

"Like, just a bunch of stuff. Crystal Cove, the Mystery Machine, like, my great uncle's mansion." He sniffed. "Like, you and Fred and Daphne and Scoob." He turned back to her and gave a small smile. "I guess that's why I, like, wrote those letters; had you guys on the brain." She smiled back, then took in a deep breath through her nose to calm herself.

"Is that everything that happened?" Velma went for a joking tone. "No fire raining from the sky or demon hordes besieging the school?" He laughed, the tension draining from his voice and taking her apprehension with it. Good; seeing him so subdued had felt at odds with the natural order of the universe.

"Yeah, like, I guess it doesn't sound like all that big of a deal when I just list it all out like that." He held up his hands in a playfully imploring way. "But, believe you me, it was, like, super freaky at the time." The researcher picked up on the past tense immediately.

"But, it's not anymore?" She asked. "Happening, I mean." She clarified. No doubt it would still be 'super freaky' if it were still going on. The teacher shook his head.

"Weirdest thing," He leaned in towards her, resting his elbows on his knees. "Everything stopped five days ago." Velma frowned. She'd been here, relatively speaking, for one day. It had taken her four days to reach the school. She had left the same day she'd gotten the letter. Assuming magic was involved in the delivery (and she was quite sure it had been), that would mean...

"It stopped when you sent out the letters?" That, if true, would be a far sight more than she could chalk up to coincidence. Shaggy blinked, straightening.

"Huh." His brow furrowed thoughtfully as he put together the pieces. "You don't think something, like, _wanted_ me to me to...?"

"It's a possibility." A stronger one than she liked, at that. He didn't need to know that, though; at least, not until she was sure of it. "I'll need to talk with Miss Grimwood when we get back to the school." Bracing her hands against her knees (and wincing because _both_ of her shoulders were sore now), she stood up. "We need to figure out if your Shadow Man is really gone, and if the, eh," She thought for a moment for an appropriate name, as 'thing in the bog' was becoming a cumbersome and, unfortunately, not specific enough term. "Bog Stalker, let's call it, is connected."

"Sounds good." The gym teacher rose to his feet as well. "Like, totally scary and horrible, but good. Just like old times, huh?"

"Just about." Velma nodded, letting a nostalgic grin tug at her mouth. "I doubt we'll find Old Man Jenkins responsible for this one, though." Not that she really minded. No matter what the cause behind the shadowy emanations and psychic bog monster, it was certain to be _fascinating_.

"Guess that'd be, like, too much to hope for." Shaggy sighed. "So, like, do I call the girls now, or...?"

"One second." She held up a finger, then closed her eyes and concentrated. She strained her awareness, trying to pick up any sign of the Bog Stalker. Nothing. Of course, she was hardly psychic, but something told her the creature had retreated for the moment. "Ok. Clues first, then call the girls." She really didn't want to have any more distractions running around and disturbing possible clues than she had to.

"Uh, ok." Shaggy nodded obediently, more than willing to follow her lead. "Where do we look first?" A bit _too_ willing to follow her lead, perhaps, considering that there was a near-sheer drop on one side of them and an unexplored ruin on the other; no way his investigative skills had become that rusty. Velma stared at him silently over the top of her glasses. "...Like, right." He gave an embarrassed laugh, then held out his arm towards the only possible direction for them to proceed. "Ladies first?"

"Good manners, or are you just afraid of going first?" The researcher asked rhetorically, stepping past him. The piles of splintered wood and rotted books nearby suggested a small library or study. Disappointment that it was, that such a valuable store of information had been lost, Velma had expected it; practitioners of dark magics (especially the 'stupid and powerful' ones) often failed to properly protect their tomes and accoutrements from their own misfired spells, or they simply rigged things so that their knowledge wouldn't outlive them. The very notion got her dander up.

Still, if the Witch of the Web had been following the usual conventions of evil magus (and the mountaintop castle certainly suggested she had), then the ritual chamber couldn't be too far away. The Occult Hunter wasn't betting on any books or parchments having survived in what would have been the epicenter of the magical overload, but she hoped to find a trinket or two that might give her an idea of what kind of effects the Witch's demise may have had on the surrounding area. Even if she didn't, the nature of the destruction closest to the event could possibly clue her in to the nature of the overload.

Of course, suspecting the ritual chamber was nearby and actually finding it amoung all the ruin and rubble were two different things.

"Ok, let's get down to it." She absently waved for Shaggy to step up beside her, eyes roaming over the area. "We need to find what's left of the room where the girls were, uh, what'd you call it? Revoltized?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Right, that room." She tried to mentally reconstruct the layout of the castle, based on what Shaggy had told her and her own (admittedly less than expert) knowledge of typical fortress construction. "Skylight says top floor, which is lucky for us, and a fireplace suggests a central room."

"Like, yeah," The gym teacher agreed, nodding. "And I got in there through this, like, rotating wall. You know the kind." She did. The rotating wall was probably the single most popular form of hiding a secret passage in existence. (Well, in her experience, anyway.)

"Ok, she probably didn't have any Engineering or Architectural degrees, so she likely just copied an existing castle design. That means the layout wouldn't typically have a proper ritual chamber, and she'd have to make-do with something else..." A safe-room maybe? In the event of an attack, the non-fighting nobles could withdraw through the secret passage into a hidden room until the fighting ended. Plenty of castles were built with such rooms in mind, usually a product of paranoid or flat-out insane leaders. It would be an ideal place for a long-burning ritual, serving to hide the magic and the practitioner both.

_Third brick from the top, on the right side. Slightly discoloured, if you know to look. Slide it open, down the hall, keep quiet. Crack the light for air and fresh water, can't be seen from outside, ration the food correctly to last a fortnight. Won't be found. Hang them on hooks, the bats do the rest. Powder in the fire puts the bats to sleep. Use the thin needle. _

"If the room wasn't accessible through the normal hallways," Velma reasoned, not bothering to wonder why she was suddenly picturing a hypodermic needle; her mind made odd connections sometimes. "Then the debris may lead us right to it." Or it might be totally buried. "Given the way the rubble seems to have fallen, we should be able to tell which parts were halls and which parts were walls." Upon realizing her unintentional rhyme, she forged ahead, lest Shaggy try to play off of it. "If we find a spot that indicates a walled-off hallway, it could be our secret passage."

"Like, beats checking under every last rock to see what we find." Her companion shrugged, scanning the ruin as she had. "I guess we're standing in a hall right now?" Velma glanced down and, sure enough, it appeared as though Shaggy's assessment was correct.

"Looks like it." With that, the hunt for clues began in earnest.

* * *

><p>In another part of the bog, a hunt of a different sort continued at a frantic pace. The Beast was fast, and it was only the fact that it kept stopping to look around and pick a new direction to run that allowed the trio to maintain the chase.<p>

Abraham, unsurprisingly, led the pack by a wide margin, leaping over roots and crashing through dried-out underbrush with an undeterrable fervor. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Daphne was quite impressed with his ability to move so well with all the heavy fur he was wearing. The front of her mind, however, was occupied with not falling too far behind the Cajun, and making sure Fred didn't fall too far behind her. Fast as the blonde was, he seriously lacked maneuverability.

Daphne hadn't been able to another good look at the Beast again, though she did catch glimpses whenever she looked forward to spy Abraham and caught sight of the creature beyond him. It blended in well with the environment, being, as she found, an earthy brown colour. She thought once or twice that she had caught sight of long, green appendages, but she couldn't be sure between the distance, dust, and dashing.

And, speaking of dust? Her clothes were almost certainly ruined.

Still, onwards they rushed, through the remains of the bog, heedless of the dry, crackling underbrush and the deep troughs where water once flowed. The empty branches of the trees stretched a patchwork carpet of sunlight and shadow across the ground, the gnarled and twisted roots of withered trees piercing upwards from the dirt like grasping fingers. Daphne did what she could to avoid them.

Somehow, the trio found themselves gaining on the Beast. The Beast, in turn, slowed considerably and turned to face its persistent pursuers. Warning bells sounded loudly within the heiress's head, and she halted well away from the creature. Abraham, too caught up in his bloodlust, continued his charge.

"Die!" With a shout, the Cajun dropped his shotgun and lit the molotov, his supposed last resort, and lobbed it at the Beast. It sailed through the air in a sharp arc, spinning slightly as it descended towards its target, and was deftly snatched from its path by a long, green vine. The light from the burning rag illuminated the creature, giving Daphne her first proper look at it.

Its body was large, around the size of a person, and oblong, like a misshapen egg. It had no arms or legs, nor a neck and head, but a multitude of writhing, undulating vines sprouted from its sides and bottom. A single massive, lidless blood-red eye took up nearly a third of its front, the sclera as black as the pupil. Taking up the rest of the 'face' was a gaping maw, lined with rows of long, thin teeth that were stained red and black with blood.

"D-dass..." Abraham could only stare at the creature, too shocked to move. "Dass not da Beast." He whispered. Daphne felt Fred grab her wrist as she took a step towards the older man.

Then, before anyone could react, the creature whipped the molotov back at the Cajun. He managed little more than a sharp intake of air before it exploded against his chest.

The flash was blinding. When the redhead got her vision back, just moments later, Abraham was on the ground, screaming in pain and fear as he tried to fight the flames racing over his body. Freddie was faster to react than she was, darting to the Cajun's side and trying to pull away his heavy furs, despite the already-spreading fire around him. There was movement from the monster, and Daphne's gaze snapped to it.

It was staring at her, its tentacle-like vines whipping to and fro excitedly. It looked from her, to the fire. She took an involuntary step back as it contorted its mouth into a pleased grin, and it let out a wet, thick chuckle. Then, it turned and vanished into the bog.

The fire was beginning to consume the ever-present brush that permeated the bog. Knowing that it would be impossible to contain if it were allowed to grow, Daphne did the only thing she could think of and grabbed up as much loose dirt as she could in an attempt to smother the flames. It wasn't enough. The fire continued to consume unabated, and the heat quickly became too intense for Daphne to approach.

Stumbling back, she nearly tripped over Freddie, whom had managed to separate Abraham from his furs. Luckily, the furs had taken the brunt of the heat and actual flame, but there had still been damage, Daphne could tell, especially to the Cajun's face and hands.

"We've got to get out of here!" She shouted over the increasing roar of the fire, helping Fred haul the near-unconscious Abraham to his feet. They only had one real chance of getting out before the fire gained enough momentum to overtake them. "Back to the truck!"

They only managed to make it a few yards when the earthquake knocked them to the ground.

* * *

><p>"I think were getting close..." Shaggy paused, pointing to a pile of broken glass and metal. "I, like, recognise that mirror." Velma, recalling what he had told her of the mirror and its monster when recounting his time with the ghouls, approached the shattered glass cautiously. There were a few different kinds of entities that could be bound to mirrors, fewer of them pleasant, and the researcher was unsure if breaking the mirror would be enough to release this one. She knelt and peered down at the dusty, smudged shards.<p>

"Anyone in there?" On one hand, if there was nothing there, it no loss. On the other, if something _was_ there, it could provide them with information. Or it could try to pull them into some kind of mirror-world and eat their souls. Movement through the grime caught her focus.

"L-like, maybe we should, uh..." Shaggy trailed off when she pulled her sleeve over her hand and began wiping the largest shards clean (relatively speaking).

"SoMeoNE is HeRE." She froze in her efforts as a voice answered from the broken mirror. Shaggy's voice. "I sERVe beYoND thE ShAttERinG." It was dark, rough, and halfway growling, but definitely Shaggy's voice. It seemed to breathe as it spoke, snarling out heavily in the middle of words.

"Who..." Velma stopped herself from asking 'who are you?' (mirror monsters rarely had a strong sense of personal identity) as an image began to form in the shards. Shaggy's face. Like the voice, the visage was dark and rough, the eyes, ears, and teeth betraying an obvious demonic taint. A moment later, she realized that it wasn't just a twisted reflection of Shaggy, but of what he had looked like all those years ago. The monster was still in the last form it had taken. "Who do you serve?"

"HaaAah..." The mirror monster let out a disgusted snarl. "Do yOU tHink I HAVe foRGottEN?" It growled accusingly. "OR do you BelieVE MY loYALty has shATTERed aS Well as mY mIRRor? I SERve you, MiStreSS, as ALWays."

This, understandably, gave the Occult Hunter pause. She quickly sifted through the possibilities: Either she had, somehow, a demon bound to her will without realizing it, or she was being mistaken for the monster's actual Mistress. Well, she could put both theories to the test with one question.

"And who am I?" She asked, going for an authoritative tone. The monster knit his brow in confusion for a moment, before his expression returned to anger.

"My sENSes HAve dARkeNed in thESE yEArs, but a MirrOR MONster cANNot be foOLEd." It declared vitriolically. "You ARE the WITch oF The WeB, mIStrESS." Well, question answered, then. Velma decided that she could roll with this quite well. She discreetly motioned for Shaggy to go on looking for the ritual chamber; the monster probably wouldn't react well to his presence anyway, and she could handle a weakened demon that couldn't even leave it's mirror.

"Speak, then!" She commanded dramatically. "What have you seen in your long vigil?" She worried momentarily that she might be overplaying it, but the mirror monster didn't seem to find her performance odd.

"DaRKNesS aND DUst has cOVEreD MY sight SINce the sHATTerINg," The demon spat. "But THe taSTE of MAgiC shOWED mE mUCh. MagIC RAn wilD ANd witHOUT diREctioN, until it sETTled inTo thE eARTh of the BOG. It gAVe rIse tO THe noT-UndEATh, and the tHREAd toRe fREe frOM the fABRIc." It grimaced. "The sHADoW pasSEd by My mIRRoR maNY times."

"Er..." Okay, not as helpful as she'd been hoping, though still rife with information. Magic running wild was probably how the monster saw the magical overload, which was nothing new to her. The tidbit about it settling into the bog was a good bit of information, though. From what Velma recalled of her research, free magic tended to be absorbed by living beings, which only rarely resulted in an serious manifestations of said magic. But, with everything in the bog dead, there would be nothing to absorb the magic, leaving it to soak into the surrounding area, which could lead to a few interesting outcomes...

A 'not-undeath' rising, however, was a bit harder to puzzle out. Magic could be used to animate the dead or keep those not quite gone from passing on by suspending them in undeath, though both of those required the will of a soul, be it that of a magic user or a restless spirit. To raise something in a way that wasn't undeath, however, was something Velma had never heard of. Magic was quite incapable of creating genuine life, so the monster likely hadn't been speaking of a living thing, either. Not living and not undead, yet still risen? Maybe one of the girls or Miss Grimwood would know more.

Freeing thread from fabric, she would have to puzzle out once she had a better idea of what had been going on in the ritual room. She suspected some kind of spell-weaving, or maybe a slow-burning enchantment that the overload interrupted. And as for the last thing...

"The shadow?" If this _didn't_ somehow relate to Shaggy's Shadow Man, Velma would be very surprised.

"He oF THe thoUASnD masKS. He seARchEd foR the ANCHor." The researcher-come-witch-impersonator really hoped she wasn't entering an infinite loop of unknown nouns being the answer to questions about other unknown nouns.

"And the anchor would be...?" Somehow, she already knew that the answer would be less than helpful.

"The aNChoR is yOURs anD YOurS ALone, miSTREss, oF CouRSe." The monster recited in a well-practiced manner, bowing slightly. "AnD I Will SPEAk nOT of it." Velma sighed inwardly; Of course he was ordered to keep quiet about anything that might actually explain things. (That kind of knowledge would have made things far too easy, obviously.)

"That's... yeah, great." Pushing for a better answer would probably tip the mirror monster off to her true identity, so that avenue was closed off, along with all the other things that the Witch of the Web would naturally be expected to know. Even under the guise of testing the monster's memory, it was a bit too risky. "Sleep now, and gather your strength." She commanded. She needed time to think up some new questions, and the monster's visage was starting to unnerve her. "I'll see about finding you a new mirror." The monster grinned at this. She rather preferred it when it scowled.

"THAnK you, MisTREss..." It growled, fading from sight. She would probably be safer just banishing the demon back to wherever it came from, but she wasn't sure of how to go about such a thing (the last thing she needed was to accidentally let it out of the mirror) and lacked the needed supplies anyway. She _would_ see about finding a new mirror, though. Something small, so she could, if nothing else, deliver the monster to someone who could deal with it properly.

Velma stood, thinking over what the mirror monster had said, and quickly located Shaggy. The gym teacher was inspecting the back wall, which had managed to hold mostly intact. She jogged over to join him.

"Like, I thought this place felt smaller than before." He said as she approached, pushing on stones at random. Suddenly, the wall fell away, crumbling down a cliff not unlike the one they'd climbed to get up here. "This is only half the castle!"

* * *

><p>When they fell, Freddie went in one direction, and she, along with Abraham, went the other. The Cajun already unsteady, was completely unable to stop himself from landing right on top of Daphne. She struggled to escape from under him as the shaking grew worse. Fred attempted to aid them, but the heaving of the ground made even crawling a difficult venture, and they remained out of his reach. The fire, which had managed to reach the nearby trees already, continued to spread at an alarming rate.<p>

"It's coming!" Abraham managed to cough out, on eye burned closed and the other wide in fear as he rolled away from her. Daphne ignored his words and focused on inching away from the flames, keeping a tight grip on his arm. He remained prone where he lay, staring into the center of the fire. "It's coming!"

"Come on!" The redhead grunted, trying to drag the much heavier man with her. "We need to-" At that moment, the ground dropped three inches straight down, both surprising her and knocking the wind from her. A horrible, massive grinding sound tore through the roar of the fire and the rumbling of the earth. It was loud and angry and hungry, like stones in a meat grinder multiplied by several orders of magnitude in both volume and scope.

Almost involuntarily, Daphne turned and looked behind her, to the fire. The ground had started to swirl around like a whirlpool, drawing in the brush, trees, and fire. She redoubled her efforts to crawl away when she realised it was slowly expanding.

Still, Abraham would not move. She tried, in vain, to pull him with her, but he was little more than dead weight. As the edge of the dirt-whirlpool grew nearer, her bravado failed, and she released the Cajun's arm. Without him holding her back, she was able to adopt a steady crawl. There were sharp cracks and pops as the withered trees in the throes of the pool were shattered by the force of the churning dirt.

"It's here!" Guilt seized her at Abraham's cry, and she turned to look at him, her mind instantly conjuring images of the man being dragged to his death. To her relief, neither the fire nor the whirlpool had reached him. In fact, the pool seemed to have stopped expanding, and all of the fire was being drawn into the center. The Cajun was staring into the ball of flame, transfixed.

The rumbling of the ground intensified suddenly, and the earth began change. At first, Daphne thought the pool was sinking. Then, as the movement continued, she realized that the ground all around the whirlpool was slowly rising up. It picked up speed quickly, taking a more definite shape as it grew. Long, thin protrusions formed, five in number, connected by a thick slab, with the whirlpool in the center. The breath left the redhead.

_It was a massive, earthen hand._

The hand closed into a fist with a sound like low thunder, snuffing out the flame and whirlpool at once. The rumbling decreased as the fist began to sink back into the ground. It lost shape as it sank, returning to a hill of dirt, then a mound, and then to nothing. It left behind a hulking, inhuman creature.

It was a seamless blending of plant and earth and animal, fur and moss and bark stretching across branching limbs of rotting muscle and wood. Its talons, of which it had five per hand, were bone, inches long and sharp as carving knives. Its legs were a single column of twisting dirt, rotating endlessly. The stench of rot and decay and wet leaves flowed from it. What struck Daphne most, however, was the rotting, long-dead human corpse that jutted out from its front like a grim decoration. The empty sockets of the skull glowed with a red light, and mist fell freely from the open mouth.

"Da Beast!" Abraham wheezed. "G-get my gun!" Daphne didn't move, some instinct within her commanding her to remain frozen. From a few feet away, she heard Freddie mutter to himself.

"...Gonna need a bigger trap."


	11. Chapter 11

Um, this chapter is much, much darker than the previous ones. Just a heads up. Also, check it out, new story cover! Kinda simplistic, but I think it's nifty. **  
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Katerina Riley - Well, I guess we'll see it I can write it or not when/if we get to that. (Probably when.)

Lord Xantos A. Fowl - Yeah, I suppose I've gotten into a habit of stopping on cliffhanger-type spots. That, uh... that doesn't happen this chapter.

Bookworm Gal - Yeah, pretty much all the minor bits from the movie will be making appearances in this fic. Most of 'em pretty big, even.

To everyone else, thanks for sticking with me this long. All I can ask is that you keep with me through here and beyond, all the way to the end. Any questions, comments, or thoughts can be left in that little box at the bottom of the page.

**11**

Velma was doing her best not to feel disappointed as she used the chain to lower herself towards the ground. Which, she realised, was rather silly in the face of all that had happened on this little outing. Discovery of the Bog Stalker? Check. The revelation of why Shaggy had wanted the gang to come visit? Check. The first-hand exploration of half of a powerful witch's castle, complete with a conversation with a demon? Check and check. So much learned, so much yet to be learned through the magic of research... Ok, that thought lifted her mood a notch.

"Alright," She let herself drop the last foot or so, to save her aching shoulders what strain she could. Elsa and Phantasma were waiting just a few steps away. "You two find anything?"

"Elsa found some blood!" Phantasma helpfully provided before the golem could so much as open her mouth. "It was all old and crusty and brown and yuck." The phantom made a face.

"Nothing relevant." Elsa added, obviously disappointed with her own lack of discoveries. Velma felt a twinge of pity for the tall girl; it was never fun for a clue hunt to end without clues.

"And I~" Phantasma continued in a sing-song voice. "Found a feather!" She pulled said feather from an unseen pocket with a flourish, delighted at its existence. "Look at the speckles! How often do you see a speckled feather?"

"...yeah." Velma looked from the feather, to Phantasma, to Elsa. The golem just shrugged. "That's all you found then?" Hardly surprising; all the clues seemed to have been concentrated in the castle. Shaggy, having climbed just after her to trade safety for speed, then placed his feet on the ground, smiling up at the chain and giving it a little shake. Phantasma's prize caught his eye.

"Like, does that feather have speckles on it?" He leaned down to examine it, and Phantasma beamed, thrilled to have her interest shared. He let out a small laugh. "Neat. Don't, like, see those very often."

"I know, right?" The phantom giggled, the pitch reaching the perfect level to kick Velma's headache back into being. "This is totally good luck, I know it!" She did a little pirouette in the air and slipped the feather back into whatever pocket it came from.

"Yes. Wonderful." The researcher began to shake her head in exasperation, but aborted the motion when her brain screeched at her. "If that's all, we need to get going." Without waiting for a response, Velma turned and began marching in the general direction they'd initially entered the clearing. She only had a vague idea of the way back to the school, but maybe Shaggy would take the initiative and start leading. (Ha, right.)

"Hey, hey, hey!" Phantasma shot ahead of her, floating in her path. "I also found this!" She held out her hand, displaying a small black and brown stone. "Okay, Elsa found it, but I thought we should take it with us!"

"Yeah, that's..." Velma's sarcastic reply died. "...Not a rock." She took the object, her eyes narrowing as she turned it over in her hands. It was highly unlikely for a rock to naturally be so long and thin, like an oversized sewing needle, or headless nail. And the colour... She scratched at it with her fingernails, momentarily wishing she kept them long like Daphne's, and began to chip away at the brown and black coating, revealing the white beneath. "It's a tooth." She frowned.

"That's a tooth?" Elsa peered over the researcher's shoulder.

"Like," Shaggy leaned over her other shoulder, and she suddenly felt rather crowded. "What kind of animal has teeth like that?"

"Not thick enough for an alligator, and too long for a snake fang." Elsa observed. "And too long for the needle-teeth of any mammal I can think of. Usually teeth like that are only found on deep-water dwellers." There was a slight pause as the rest of the group turned to stare at her. For the first time since Velma had met her, the golem looked embarrassed. "... I thought about getting some new teeth a while back, wanted to know my options..." Leaving aside the apparent fact that Elsa could integrate non-human parts (and didn't that open up a whole new realm of questions), she had a point. This tooth was something that didn't fit. Not with the environment, and not with their knowledge.

"And that makes it a clue." Velma nodded to herself, slipping the tooth into a pouch on her vest. "We'll take a closer look at it back at the school." Velma's spirit lifted. Ah, that had been why she was disappointed; she'd needed a nice physical clue she could pick up and take with her. Amazing what difference the little things made. "Good job, you two." While Elsa accepted the praise with a perfectly quiet smile, Phantasma's squeal of joy instantly destroyed the progress Velma's mood had made. The researcher opened her mouth to say something she would probably regret, but Shaggy beat her to the punch.

"Hey, like, where's Scoob?" The gym teacher's voice was tinged with concern, though he wasn't ready to become worried sick just yet.

"Uh..." Elsa glanced about for a moment, before walking towards the corner of the cliff. "Over here." Rounding the corner, the giant bones came into view. Velma had forgotten about them in light of everything else that had happened, and now wondered if the tooth in her pocket was such a grand clue after all. As they neared, the missing Great Dane could be seen lounging atop a massive rib and chewing lazily on some miscellaneous bone (probably a toe-bone or the like, since it was small enough for him to get his jaws around).

"Ugh, not cool, Scooby Doo!" Shaggy sounded quite appalled, and with good reason. "We, like, played ball with that guy!"

* * *

><p>The trip back to the school was, thankfully, uneventful. Velma made some inquires to the group about mirror monsters, but their knowledge of demons seemed to be more limited than her own. As to the specific demon I question, Shaggy and Scooby were the only ones to have direct (or, at least, mind-control-free) contact with it. Scooby could only recall that it was scary and not quite a genius (it fell for a literally paper-thin mummy disguise, for starters), and Shaggy could only tell her that inside the inside of the mirror was dark, cold, and cramped.<p>

Her questions about a 'not-undeath' were met with a similar lack of answers, much to her annoyance. Perhaps Miss Grimwood would know more.

By time they arrived, noon was only about twenty minutes away. Velma found herself (silently) agreeing with Shaggy and Scooby's declarations of hunger and desire for lunch, despite yesterday's fine example of ghoul cuisine. Surely Miss Grimwood would be sure to take her (non-Shaggy) human guest into account when it came to the meal. At least, the researcher hoped she would.

But, before that, Velma wanted to go up to her room and get cleaned up. Tromping through a swamp and climbing crumbling cliffs and searching decrepit castles tended to build up filth on one's person. As she only had one anti-vampire outfit, she especially wanted to make sure it received proper care.

"Of course, I would love to stay for your, uh, unique cooking, Miss Grimwood," When they entered the foyer, they found the Headmistress speaking with a mustachioed (and the mustache was, to Velma's amusement, of the Snidely Whiplash variety) man of military dress and bearing. Despite the softness of his voice, he still spoke with a clipped, commanding edge. "But I'm needed back at the base at twelve-hundred hours." With a mental click, Velma realized that the man was quite probably from the military school up the road. Miss Grimwood gave him a pitying smile.

"Sometimes, Colonel Calloway, I wonder who is truly in charge at your school: you, or your schedules?" Grimwood's expression turned, much to Velma's surprise, flirtatious. "Don't you ever do things... spontaneously?" The researcher didn't really want to intrude and break up the moment, but she really, really didn't wish to see a woman her mother's age try to get a date. Luckily, a phantom, a golem, and three detectives make for an easy group to notice.

"Rogers!" The Colonel snapped his heels together, firing off a crisp salute at Shaggy. Relief was palpable in his voice. "Just the man I wanted to talk to! Walk with me, won't you?" Without waiting for a response, Calloway marched directly past the group and out the door, his hand flashing out and yanking Shaggy along with him.

"Close one." Elsa commented lightly.

"Hmm, yes." Miss Grimwood grinned, miming a finger snap. "But, I'll get him yet." She laughed, hands on her hips. "Welcome back, girls, so good of you to make it in time for lunch."

"Like Coach Shaggy would let us miss it." Phantasma giggled.

"Reah!" Scooby chimed in enthusiastically, before trotting off to the kitchen. Velma shook her head as she watched him go; he'd spent the entire time they were at the castle snacking on bones and he was still ravenous. Granted, this wasn't entirely unexpected.

"Tell me," The Headmistress turned to the researcher. "Did you find any answers out in the bog?"

"A few." Velma shrugged noncommittally. "What we mostly found were more questions. I was actually hoping you'd be able to answer a couple of them for me. After that, and some more research, we'll need to take another trip into the bog ? half the witch's castle was missing, and we need to find it."

"...I see." Grimwood frowned , her face more troubled than Velma had ever see it. "It would seem things are indeed more complicated than I'd hoped." She blinked, and her usual cheer returned. "Why don't you go get washed up, and we can discuss all of this over lunch, hmm?"

"Yeah, sounds good." Velma made for the stairs, already mentally compiling the long lists of knowns, unknowns, answers, and questions that would need to be talked about and in which order they needed to be touched upon for maximum dissemination of knowledge.

"And I found a feather!" The bespectacled woman didn't need to look behind her to know what was to follow, so she forcibly ignored the high-pitched giggles and laughs that accompanied Phantasma's tale of feather finding and began climbing the steps. She had to hold back a yawn, blinking away the mistiness that appeared in her eyes; apparently, her lack of sleep was catching up to her. Maybe she could grab a nap after lunch.

"Welcome back." Velma froze for a fraction of a second, then forced herself to maintain her pace and look up with a false casualness. Sibella stood at the top of the stairs, smiling serenely down at her. Of course. Velma berated herself for not expecting the vampire to make a move as soon as they returned.

"Hm." Her inner researcher recognized the significance of their relative positions, and knew that Sibella had planned things that way. A show of dominance, superiority. Typical predator. The vampire was trying to subtly re-assert her status as alpha after Velma's sleeve full of sage trick this morning. Next would come the probing of her defenses, both physical and psychological. Seeing as neither one could openly attack the other, the researcher decided to continue her current course of aggressively ignoring the monster.

"Have fun?" Sibella stayed rooted to her spot and posture, determined not to lose this round of verbal sparring, even if she was the only one participating. Velma merely continued climbing the stairs, not even looking at the ghoul anymore. When she reached the top, her path took her right next to the vampire, and she did not alter it. Sibella caught her arm before she could get by, forcing her to stop with supernatural strength. Though her hand twitched, Velma did not give the vampire the satisfaction of making her reach for her dagger.

"Yes?" She looked Sibella in the eyes. Though she tried not to betray the tremor in her spine at the sight of those hungry depths, the vampire's smile widened. She knew.

"You should go freshen up." The purple-tinted woman said with a smug kindness. "You look a fright."

Then, she released Velma and made her way down the stairs to greet Shaggy as he came back inside.

Velma cursed loudly in her head as she returned to her room. Things were only going to escalate now that Sibella had seen weakness in her again. She had to prepare for protecting herself more actively, and to do that she had to take stock of everything she had with her, both knowledge and supplies. Upon opening her door, however, she found a snag in that plan.

Her room had been ransacked. Her sheets were slashed, torn into ribbons and strewn about like confetti. Her pillow and mattress were gutted along with them, the padding and metal dug through like soft soil. The words 'Rest In Peace' were scratched into the headboard; the entire bed had been turned into an open grave.

The rest of the room had fared no better. Her bag was little more than tatters and straps, it's contents ripped apart as though by wild dogs. Her clothes simply pieces, small bits of fabric and thread that wouldn't even add up to a single complete article when combined. She wasn't concerned about those; clothing could be replaced.

But her books could not. She sifted through the scraps on her hands and knees, searching out every stray edge and sentence fragment. What little writing that was left was too damaged to even read. Years of research... gone in an instant. Everything she'd learned, her entire life for the last four years, had been in those books. Every scribbled note in the margins and every journal entry and every drop of her work was now reduced to meaningless trash. She crushed the paper in her hands, and felt something: wetness. Nearly dry, but distinctly there, smudging the ink and leaving black spots on her fingers.

Sibella had _spit_ on them.

Velma's whole body shook, her breaths coming out in shuddering gasps and growls. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as she screwed them shut, and she could feel her face flare a fiery red as a horrible pressure pushed against the inside of her skull. Her muscles felt like they were shrinking, constricting her into a tiny ball on the floor and drawing her fists so tightly that they hurt. Her forehead rested against the icy floorboards, their coolness doing little to stop the sweat from trickling down her face.

"_Damn it!_" Her fist came down on the floor once. Then again. She pounded her fist against the boards again, and again, cursing each time. Then, for a moment, she simply collapsed where she lay, slumping against the floor limply. Some part of her was aware that she was now crying, but she did not care. After some time, probably just minutes, she rose.

Calmly, with hands trembling ever so slightly, she gathered up what little of her things she could. Her crucifix, lying in a corner where it had been thoughtlessly tossed. Her neckguard, scratched and missing bits of material, but whole. What was left of her main pair of glasses. A pencil. These were all that had survived. She left that which was unsalvageable where it lay.

She snapped the neckguard into place and fastened it securely, sore neck and shoulder ignored. She placed the crucifix around her neck. The glasses and pencil went in her pockets. Staring at her right glove, she pulled the vial of holy water from it's pouch and poured a few drops over the back of her hand.

She left the room.

Sibella was easy to find, for the vampire had stayed near to observe the effects of her handiwork. She was smiling, with a wicked gleam in her eye and satisfaction written all over her posture. She was also alone. She continued to smile as Velma stalked towards her. As the Occult Hunter got closer, however, that smile began to falter. When she saw that Velma wasn't slowing down as she neared, worry flitted around the edges of her eyes. Velma came to a stop mere inches from her, halting rigidly, and the smile disappeared entirely.

Velma stared down at her. Somehow, the bespectacled woman seemed much, much taller than she had been before, and she towered over the vampire. Sibella opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Velma continued to stare, and the younger woman could feel the animosity rolling off of her. This wasn't the reaction she had been expecting. Distantly, she realized that she had crossed some line which she had not been aware existed. A very dangerous one. She opened her mouth again, intent on actually speaking this time.

_Crack_

Pain blossomed across the left side of Sibella's face as Velma's right hand lashed up and across in a fist. The blow was stronger than anything she'd have thought a human capable of, knocking her backwards. Her head slammed into the wall behind her, the impact barely registering against the burning sensation in her face. She began to fall forward, but Velma's other hand pressed into her collarbone and pinned her where she stood. The brunette leaned in close and stared into her eyes. Sibella forced down her immediate urge to look away and stared back. Velma's eyes had changed. In what way, the vampire did not know, but it terrified her.

When she had been approaching, countless threats and dark promises she could make to Sibella had swirled through her mind. Death threats, assurances that she knew how to kill vampires. Gruesome descriptions of methods of torturing the undead. Overt hints that powdered silver and garlic could find their ways into the vampire's meals. Anything that would cow the creature. Now, however, they fell away from her mind. She simply stared.

After a long moment, she let the girl go and went to the dining room. Though she was no longer hungry, there was still much to discuss about the mystery at hand. Sibella did not join them.

* * *

><p>For one long, pregnant moment, there was no movement, save the endless churning of the Beast's dirt-pillar legs and the flowing of the mist from the corpse's mouth. Daphne could hear Abraham wheezing lowly, a sound that brought to mind dull blades on wet leather, and she worriedly wondered just how extensive the damage to his throat and lungs was. Super-heated air and smoke were dangerous enough, but if he had managed to breathe in even a little bit of gasoline-fed flame...<p>

The mist spread quickly. It was thick and wet and it slid just above the ground like an ethereal serpent, twisting this way and that as it moved forward. It reached the prone Cajun first, curling around and washing over him. The instant it touched him, the glowing red gaze of the Beast snapped to him, the corpse's head cocking to the side. This motion allowed Daphne to realize two things: One, the corpse had no lower jaw under the free-flowing mist.

Two, the Beast had only been standing still because it hadn't noticed them yet.

The massive creature let out a low, feral roar as it shot forward with a surprising speed, sliding over the ground on its twisting pillar like a whirlwind. Dirt and debris ripped from the ground as it passed, flung into the air by the force of its momentum. It reached forward angrily with its branching limbs, the talons adorning the ends forcing trees roughly out of its path, and the mist whipped into angry tendrils that coiled about the humans as if to ensnare them. The glowing eyes of the corpse never left Abraham.

One skill that Fred and Daphne had developed in their years as meddling kids was a flawless sense of timing, especially in regards to escape, and now, their honed instincts told them, was a good time to beat feet. With a familiar symmetry, they each grabbed one of Abraham's arms and yanked him away from the mist, turning smoothly and running as quickly as could be managed. They had no destination in mind, having lost all sense of where the truck might be, but any direction that took them away from the enraged Beast was worth trying. Certainly, even becoming hopelessly lost in the bog was better than sticking around at this point.

The monster's bellows followed after them, sinking into Daphne's bones like a heavy bass line and pressing into her chest with an almost-physical force. It seemed to well up from the ground beneath them, and from the trees around them, and the canopy above them, hitting the trio from all directions at once in a disorienting ball of sound. It was only the fact that they were all clinging to each other that kept them on a relatively straight path, Abraham's near-dead weight providing a centering anchor. This proved less helpful when the ground began to shake again.

At first, Daphne feared that another earthquake was starting up; she wasn't sure that they could manage to stay ahead of the Beast if the ground dropped again. However, what happened next was, perhaps, something worse. Rather than falling, the ground rose. Rapidly. The redhead's knees slammed into her own chest as her legs were forced to fold, and the rebound of the impact knocked her onto her back. Freddie held his footing slightly better, but this was only enough to cause him to fall forwards instead. Abraham, through some miracle or curse, stumbled in precisely the right way to stay upright without the couple's support.

It took Daphne a few moments to remember their current situation through the pain in her chest, which flared dully as she coughed. She worried briefly that she might have cracked or even broken a rib, but such concerns fell by the wayside as the rumbling stopped and the Beast rose into her view. Despite the fact that the chunk of earth they were on had risen well above the treetops, the creature still towered over them, the pillar that made up its legs elongating exponentially. And still, it remained fixated on the Cajun.

"Gt dn er..." Abraham's ruined throat and mouth robbed him of most of whatever words he was trying to say, but the intent was obvious in the way he stumbled towards the Beast with his hands shakily raised in bleeding fists. "ll khl yeh wht eh behh hasss!" Daphne had doubted the man's sanity before, but now she was quite certain his marbles were long gone. The Beast leaned down towards the Cajun, though Daphne couldn't guess if it was granting the injured man's request or merely getting a better look at him. The mist continued to pour from its mouth, quickly covering the entirety of the small platform of dirt they were on and spilling down the cliff-sides like waterfalls.

Daphne managed to pull herself up onto her knees, the need to keep her head above the mist outweighing her desire to lie still until her ribs stopped burning. Freddie was kneeling, half-hidden in the flowing white, his jaw set firmly as he waited for an opening to do... something. Whatever it was, the redhead hoped he would do it soon. She forced herself to take several deep breaths in preparation; whatever happened, she wasn't going to let herself be caught off guard again.

Abraham and the Beast were nearly face to face now, and their proximity allowed Daphne to see something she hadn't before. Though Abraham's visage was burned and bruised, and the corpse's face was half-rotten and missing its jawbone, there was an unmistakable resemblance between them. Though it shocked her, Daphne recognized the truth in this twist; somehow, the Cajun and the monster were _related_. In light of this, their guide's behaviour came into a sharp understanding in the redhead's mind.

She had no time to fit together everything she knew in this new light, however, as events now began to unfold in rapid succession. The first thing that happened was an eruption of sound from the Beast, as it let out that massive roar again. The sheer force behind it pushed Abraham back, and he fell into the mist. Freddie rose then, and Daphne saw that he had been waiting for that exact moment when the Cajun was out of the way, for he held in his hand Abraham's discarded shotgun.

Without waiting for the roar to subside, Fred pushed through the sound and shoved the barrel of the gun right into the Beast's ever-open mouth, pulling the trigger.

The bang was nearly swallowed by the mist, sounding more like a heavy thump than a gunshot, and any flash produced went unseen. Still, the recoil was stronger than Freddie had anticipated and the shotgun jumped and twisted from his single-handed grip, causing him to gasp in surprise and alarm. Daphne was up in a moment, pulling Abraham to his feet hastily and trying not to trip over uneven ground hidden in the mist. As for the Beast...

Fred froze in horror as the corpse's head, which had been reduced to fragments of bone and bits of muscle, snapped back together as though time were running reverse. Before he could move, before he could even think, the ground beneath him exploded into dozens of hands of dirt. They shot up and around him within a single heartbeat, gripping his arms and legs and waist with immense strength. He cried out in fear and pain as they, with he along for the ride, began to sink back into the platform.

"Freddie!" By Daphne's first step towards him, the blond was already sunk up to his chest in the dirt, more and more hands rapidly raising to clutch at him and drag him under. By her second, he was gone, with only a short, earth-muffled scream and a tiny sinkhole marking where he'd been. By her third, the mist had filled back in to the small space cleared by her boyfriend's desperate thrashing. Her fourth faltered as the swirling of the mist and her own panic pressed in around her. Her fifth step was stolen by the hand gripping her ankle.

She fell forward, her hands and forearms saving her ribs from a second impact. She managed to roll over despite the vise-like hold on her ankle. The mist had been pushed away momentarily by her fall, allowing her to see her assailant. Her heart skipped a beat. With one hand grabbing her tightly, and the other stretching towards her blindly, Abraham lay helpless on the ground. Between the damage done by the fire and the obscuring nature of the mist, the Cajun couldn't see. She reached out to meet his free hand.

"Abraham," She whispered, her voice almost inaudible. "I'm-" The injured man didn't even make a sound as the ground practically melted beneath his prone form, dissolving into a mass of hands. He was gone in less than a second. Gone, that is, except for the steel grip he maintained on Daphne's ankle. As the mist flowed back in around her, whiting out her vision, she felt him begin to drag her down after him. Her survival instinct kicked in, and she tried to wrench her leg away.

"No!" She failed. Turning as much as the ever-tightening grip allowed, she dug her fingernails and free foot into the platform, scrambling madly against the pull. "Please, no!" She felt tears of fear and pain well up in her eyes as her perfectly manicured nails cracked and snapped in the dirt, doing nothing to free her. The rubber edge of her shoe caught against a half-buried rock, and her backwards motion momentarily halted. Letting out a strained grunt, she pushed with her leg and forced her fingers to dig back into the ground. Slowly, painfully, she inched forward.

One inch.

Two inches.

The grip around her ankle began to weaken. She could feel it slipping. At this realization, strength surged in her muscles, and she threw herself another inch. Abraham let go, and her freed force pushed her away from the pit.

Relief and exhaustion shot through her in equal measures, and she collapsed limply against the platform. The terror that had consumed her mind receded to the frazzled edges of her consciousness, and a sob shuddered its way out of her. She couldn't stay where she was, she knew that. She had to get up, had to get away. If she could get to the truck, if she could drive to Velma... Velma would know what to do. She would know how to fight this thi-

A hand grabbed her leg. Then another, and another. A single tug brought her to the edge of the pit. A numb paralysis overtook her as more hands, dozens of them, rose up as one and descended on her. No amount of struggling could free her now, and she knew it as a fatal truth. She knew what was to come. They pulled her into the pit, the dirt flowing around her like water She sank quickly; it was only a few moments before she had to look directly up to see light. There, at the top of the pit, the Beast's eyes stared down at her, their red glow condemning and sentencing at once.

"F-Freddie..." The tears flowed freely now as she felt her future fade away. She would never marry her boyfriend. Never again feel his arms around her, or hear his voice. And she would never once hear those words she'd longed for... "I love y-" The dirt filled her mouth and covered her eyes, and she was gone.

The platform collapsed in upon itself a moment later, melding into the ground. Not even a hill of loose earth remained where it had been.

Somewhere in the bog, an abandoned pickup truck sank into ground, leaving behind no trace.


	12. Chapter 12

Wow, I don't even have an excuse for taking so long with this. All I can offer is the fact that I've been doing a whole mess of research for this.

Katerina Riley- I object to your accusation. I'm most certainly not a woman. (Evil, I'll cop to)

Bookworm Gal- It only gets more upsetting (with brief flickers of brightness) from here on out, just so ya know.

Lord Xantos A. Fowl - Scrappy is not currently around, likely adopted by some farm family or something. I'll probably work him in somewhere down the line, though.

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><p><strong>12<strong>

"A 'not-undeath' rose?" Miss Grimwood frowned, her brow furrowing in confusion.

"That's what it said." Velma didn't bother to look at the Headmistress, instead focusing on piling food (mostly fruits and vegetables, though a slab of steak had been scrounged up from somewhere as well) onto her plate. Once Sibella was no longer in the forefront of her thoughts, the dark knot of anger in her stomach had loosened and her hunger had returned with a vengeance. She knew that her tone and actions were less than polite, but she was still vexed enough to not care. In her current mood, she wanted nothing more than to get her answers, solve the mystery, and then leave, research be damned. "You ever hear of anything like that before?"

"Not living, not undead, yet risen..." Whether it was due to years of dealing with Winnie's table-manners, or merely great tact and graciousness, Miss Grimwood paid Velma's rudeness no mind. "Something about that feels familiar..."

"Bit of a paradox, isn't it?" Tanis added quietly, her previous simmering anger replaced with a weary sullenness. Even in her less inquisitive state, Velma wondered if the youngest ghoul hadn't begun to slip towards the Melancholy stage. "Can't be, but is."

"Yes, quite." Grimwood looked over to the mummy, realization alighting in her eyes. "A Necromancer's Paradox." Abruptly, she jumped from her seat and dashed out of the room (which, considering her size and stature, was more of a quick shuffle). Velma spared a glance after her, but quickly returned to her meal; Either Grimwood had happened upon a relevant notion, or she hadn't. In both cases, the woman would be back eventually, so the researcher saw no need to bother herself with the details. Somewhere in her thoughts, she acknowledged that she was most certainly not herself (as bothering with the details was basically what she lived for), and then acknowledged that she didn't really care.

Shaggy made to reach for some morsel on her plate, but the 'you have displeased me' glare that she'd perfected back in the days when they had dated kept him at bay. Scooby, however, was immune to such tactics and plopped his massive head right by her plate, staring up at her with the saddest eyes he could bring to bear, his tail wagging slowly. After a few moments of glaring at him with no effect, Velma tossed a cucumber slice away from the table and the Great Dane went tromping after it. It would only buy her a few moments of peace (unless she was lucky and it rolled somewhere hard to reach), but she was willing to take what she could get.

"What else the mirror monster say?" Winnie, of course, was diametrically opposed to the concept of peace, and proceeded to badger the irate researcher. The other girls, save Tanis, looked to Velma expectantly. Well, fine; she needed to see if they knew anything about any of the proper nouns the demon had been tossing around anyway.

"Mostly nonsense. It didn't want to give me a straight answer." She lied; she was NOT going to mention how it thought she was Revolta, not if she could help it. She had enough to explain without getting into the mechanics of demonic senses and their faulty bits. (Suffice to say, mirror monsters were, in fact, quite easily fooled. Often by their own inability to tell humans apart.) "But it did say something about an Anchor. Capital A. Anyone know anything about that?"

"Did... did he say what kind of Anchor?" Elsa's face screwed up in puzzlement. "Cause that's pretty useless by itself."

"He did not." Velma began to shake her head, but her incredibly persistent headache forced her to stop short. "I'd have to assume it's magical in nature, though. Some kind of object that ties a spell or creature to one place..." Granted, that was a big assumption, but she didn't see any other viable possibilities, given her current information. "I don't suppose any of you can sense magic?"

"Uh, sorry." Elsa shrugged, giving an apologetic smile. "Purely a twisted perversion of science here."

"I can sense other spirits a mile away," Phantasma boasted proudly, thankfully without a giggle of any kind. "Buuuuuuuut magic, not so much." Winnie did not even bother answering, to the surprise of no one.

With this return to something resembling an investigation, Velma was feeling more herself. Enough so, at least, that she hesitated to ask Tanis about her magic-sensing ability. The mummy was, perhaps, more sociable than before (or, at least, less anti-social), but that hardly meant she was willing to talk. The ghoul's eyes, a burnt log brown, caught hers and narrowed slightly.

"I was made through black magic." Tanis stated flatly. "Magic is the one thing I can feel clearly." That, Velma supposed, made sense. After all, it wasn't like any of the mummy's physical senses still functioned in a proper capacity. Hearing, sight, touch, and all that probably worked via one part magic, one part psychic nonsense, and a fraction of a part physically. "The whole bog drips with it."

"Ah, perfect." The researcher sighed, annoyance evident in her voice. Finding a magical Anchor in all that 'dripping' would be beyond needles in haystacks territory, even with the magical radar of Tanis. It would be more like finding a particularly watery drop of water in a lake. And that was assuming Tanis's radar was any good. "Just how sensitive is your magic detector, then?" The mummy stared at her for a moment.

"You've got magic protection runes on your armor to keep people from casting spells on you." She said quietly. "And anti-scrying runes too." Velma frowned, her brow wrinkling in confusion.

"Wait, how can you see-"

"They're really poorly done." Tanis shrugged apathetically, turning back to stare at her food. The researcher heaved a vexed sigh. A properly scribed anti-scrying rune was self contained, capable of being read, but not sensed. (Hiding the user as well as itself was, of course, the entire point of camouflage, mundane or magical.) Well, as they say, you get what you pay for. Next time, she'd make sure to get a higher class of magician to scribe the runes, rather than a friend of a friend of someone she'd helped out. Perhaps Miss Grimwood knew a thing or two about runes...Ah, but she was getting sidetracked.

"Ok, so, no go in the Anchor." Velma summed up the relevant bit of the conversation, to her own disappointment. (Hey, at least she managed to pick up a bit about Tanis and her own inadequate protections.) "How about someone called 'He of the Thousand Masks'? You guys know anything about that?"

The monsters in the room collectively paused as a shudder ran through each of them.

"Uh..." This was odd enough to catch even Shaggy's attention. He regarded his students with a sort of wary apprehension, unsure if he should be concerned or not. "Everything, like, alright, girls?"

"Y-yeah." Winnie's brow lowered as she attempted to puzzle out her own reaction. She whipped her head from side to side, and the motion quickly traveled down her body in a very canine shake. The action seemed to help, as she had gained a slight smile by its conclusion. "That was _weird_."

"Tell me about it..." Phantasma quickly bounced back to her usual cheer, though it was obviously forced. "Kinda felt like someone walked over my grave." If the statement had been meant as a joke, she (for once) gave no indication of it.

"I take it you've heard of him, then?" Velma pressed, her own manner becoming cautious as her sour mood was completely overtaken by the detective in her.

"No." Elsa's answer nearly came across as a question, the inflection twisted by her confusion. Of all the girls, she was the most rooted in logic and science (though, that didn't mean much in the company of monsters), and her inability to account for her sudden dread was not easily brushed aside. "I've never heard of him before." Though such a notion would be against the very nature of a golem as she, the feeling had almost been... instinctual.

"I have." Tanis had shifted her gaze from her meal (which still remained untouched) to her hands. Her eyes held a thousand-yard stare, glassy and empty of sight. In that moment, she looked very much like the ancient corpse that she was. There was a rather uncomfortable silence as the rest of them waited for her to continue.

"...Tanis?" Velma prompted her when she didn't speak further, hoping very much that the mummy wasn't going to slip into stony anger again.

"I remember a man..." The smallest ghoul said softly, her sight still failing to focus on those around her. "A smoke-skinned royal, on a black throne." Velma's mind flashed back to the sarcophagus in the mummy's room, to the hieroglyphics that adorned it.

"The Black Pharaoh." If the Thousand Masks creature was the Shadow Man and the royal on the sarcophagus both, then it was very old indeed. Older than any other creature Velma had come across, certainly. Tanis lifted her gaze, her head tilting as she caught the words.

"They called him that name in the chants, before the ritual." She whispered, a helplessness welling within her eyes. "_Nehes, nehes, nehes. Weben em isfet. Weben em Kemet. Weben Kem Pharaoh. Weben wer neb Nyarlathotep._"

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><p>The first thing Daphne became aware of was pain. Her body jerked reflexively, trying and failing to distance itself from the crushing force against her chest. In the brief instant that it took her to begin to feel the rest of the pain throughout her being, the force removed itself, and she became momentarily weightless. The weightlessness then vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and the pain returned, this time crushing in from the sides of her ribcage. It burned, pushing into her lungs and up into her throat, traveling upwards until...<p>

Oh.

Daphne's awareness expanded, and she realized that she was throwing her guts up. This new knowledge did not remain viable for long, however, as the puking mercifully stopped in short order. The burning in her lungs and throat subsided to a satisfactory degree as well. The pain in the rest of her, however, while not so sharp as the previous had been, continued to gnaw at her limp body unabated. Aside from a possible broken rib, the redhead felt as though she were still in one piece.

Secure in this assessment, her awareness decided to kick on a few of her higher functions - thought and hearing, to start with. These, her brain had concluded, would be good for determining where she currently was. Thought got to work on recalling the last events that had occurred to her, searching for a clue or hint that might reveal her current location, while hearing took a moment to focus on all the sounds of Daphne's body. Breathing was heavy and ragged, but steady. Blood was whooshing along at an even, strong pace. Her heart was beating a touch faster than normal, but not more so than was acceptable. Good. Hearing then turned outward.

"-aphne, just breathe, that's good." Male voice, highly familiar, quiet and low. Still audible due to proximity. Thought filled in the blanks there.

"Freddie...?" Speech had slipped online unnoticed, as it often did, and Daphne's brain shifted into full consciousness at last. She blinked against the tears streaming from, and the light streaming into, her eyes, trying to focus on the mud-covered form that held her. The blonde was barely recognizable through the dirt and debris that clung to him, caked on so thickly that his own tears failed to create even the smallest of clean spots on his face.

"D-Daph?" Fred stared at her with wide, almost disbelieving eyes for a moment, before hugging her to his chest tightly. A touch tighter than was strictly comfortable, her ribs told her, but she hardly cared, hugging him back with what little strength her arms could muster. "You were, I mean, when you came out, you weren't, it _looked like_, I was..." His breath hitched, cutting off his babbling. "I was so worried about you, Daph."

"Fred," She buried her face into his chest, ignoring the mud, and just enjoyed being held for a long moment. It was reassuring for the both of them. "I'm ok. We're ok." Strength was quickly returning to her, and she pushed away from him just enough to take a bleary look at their surroundings. The light told her that they were aboveground, at least, though she couldn't make out much more. "Where are we?"

"I'm not sure." Freddie admitted, helping her to sit upright against him. "When those hands pulled me down, everything went dark. I guess I passed out, 'cause I woke up here." His arm tightened around her protectively. "Then the ground just sort of rolled over and there you were, just..." He looked away from her, coughing to clear his throat, before continuing. "I think we might be out of the bog." Daphne blinked several times in an attempt to sharpen her sight.

"How can you tell?" As far as she could see, which was, admittedly, not far, they were still surrounded by trees and dirt and nothing resembling human civilization. Fred took her hand and gently pressed it to the ground. To her surprise, it was soft and moist instead of dried-out and hard. Her face must have betrayed her thoughts, because Freddie nodded and pulled her hand back up to her lap, idly wiping the dirt from her fingertips.

"And over there," He jerked his head to the left, away from where she was facing. "I can see grass." Well, that clinched it. No way there was anything living in the Barren Bog, Daphne was quite sure of that. The Beast, whatever it was, most certainly didn't count, not when it could snap itself back together after taking a shotgun blast to the skull. She'd seen a lot of amazing and improbably complex machines and devices in her time sleuthing, but none that could do _that_. Only something supernatural could pull off such a feat. Either way, be it magic or machinery, the Beast was no living thing.

"What about Abraham?" Being out of the bog did them little good without someone who knew the region; death by exposure was hardly more pleasant than death by Beast, and just as likely without a guide. Besides, he'd been in bad shape, and probably needed their help as much as they needed his. "Can you see him anywhere?" Freddie stiffened for a split second, and she saw his jaw set firmly as his shoulders subtly squared.

"He's... He'll be fine." The blonde gave her a thin smile. Fred never had been a good liar. Daphne's heart dropped.

"Fred." She reached up, cupping his cheek with one hand and directing him to look her in the eyes. "Where is he?" He fidgeted under her gaze for a moment, before sighing and looking away.

Gently, he lifted her from his lap and set her on the ground next to him, climbing to his feet. As he reached down to pick her up again, she gripped his outstretched hands and pulled herself onto her own shaky legs, the rush of blood making her dizzy for a few moments. Gripping his arm for support, she allowed her boyfriend to lead her forwards. Her first few steps were spent staring at the ground before her, but she quickly regained enough balance to raise her eyes ahead. That's when she saw Abraham.

He lay still on a patch of black dirt. Belatedly, Daphne realized that its darkness was owed to the fact that it was soaked in the man's blood. Even without his bulky furs, the Cajun was a giant of a man, and that same lack of furs displayed the full extent of his wounds to the couple. Or would have, if not for the packed on layers of dirt that clung to him even more thickly than they did Freddie and Daphne. Almost like a wet, crumbling shell, it covered him, held together with his own vital fluids. What little of him that was not black or brown was a dark, dull red.

"Oh, God..." Daphne's knees buckled under her, but Freddie caught her smoothly and guided her to the ground. The tightness around her chest vanished, and her throat opened painfully wide as she breathed deeply, unable to pull in enough air. With each quickening breath, however, a formless black grew just behind her vision, shifting in and out of sight. He was... No. Please. He'd been a crazy, angry man, but he didn't deserve to... Not like this. The blackness swelled, and she knew, distantly, that she was beginning to hyperventilate, but all she could think about was the look in his blinded eyes as he fell into the pit of hands and-

Abraham took a slow, shallow breath. The shock of it made the redhead stop, completely, as her focus snapped to his chest, watching for the telltale rise and fall to confirm that she hadn't imagined it. A few moments later, he breathed again. Daphne began to move to his side, but Fred held her shoulder.

"Careful." He advised, worry and regret etched in his face. He didn't look at her, but stared at the unconscious man. "I'm not sure if... we might make him worse if we touch him." Unfortunately, he was right. Neither of them knew much more than basic first aid, and they had no supplies anyway. Still, what else could they do? At the very least, they needed to make sure he wasn't bleeding to death.

"Freddie, we can't just..." She swallowed, not sure how to finish. Leave him unattended? Or to die?

"I know." The blonde nodded grimly. "Just rest for now, I'll check him." He patted her shoulder once and rose, taking a step towards Abraham.

That's when the ground began to shake once more.

Fred turned back to Daphne, just in time to see Abraham's truck come hurtling through the air towards them.

Too stunned to react, it was only pure chance that the vehicle's spinning kicked it just high enough after it's impact with the ground before them to send it skipping over their heads. It continued on for a fair distance, glass, metal, and clods of dirt flying about as it crashed and rolled through the sparse greenery. With a thunderous, crunching screech, the pickup plowed roof-first into a tree that was both large and living enough to withstand the impact. It stayed pressed against the trunk for a moment, before teetering back and landing solidly on its tires, which had miraculously remained inflated.

Freddie stared at the line of destruction carved by the vehicle, letting out a single shocked laugh. Daphne pulled herself to her feet, one arm wrapped protectively around her ribs, and gingerly stepped up next to him. The Beast, it seemed, was making a statement, one which ended with '_...and the horse you rode in on!_' On the bright side, the creature had refrained from tossing the humans about the way it had the truck.

"Fred," The heiress nudged her boyfriend out of his stupor, nodding towards the wreck. "You think the first aid kit survived that?" The blonde blinked at her, then turned back to the vehicle.

"Uh, stay here," He instructed, gesturing unnecessarily to indicate where 'here' was located. "And I'll go look." Daphne didn't feel quite up to walking about too much just yet anyway, so this plan was fine with her. She took the opportunity to examine Abraham more closely.

His breathing was still shallow, but it was steady, at least. What little she could see of his burns seemed to not be bleeding, though though the dirt could easily have been masking that. On the other hand, the dirt may well have been acting as a compress on his wounds, albeit an incredibly unsanitary one. The real question, the most important one, was whether or not he could be moved without causing fatal damage. A very Velma-like mental voice informed her that, logically, it was a moot point, as they had no choice but to risk it. He would, after all, die for certain if left out here. It also pointed out, with some degree of optimism, that both she and Freddie had not been harmed by their eviction from the bog, so it stood to reason that Abraham likely had not been either. So, just the horrible burns and possible lung damage, then.

"Hey, Daph!" Freddie extricated himself from the ruined truck, waving a badly beaten aid kit about. "I found it!" Despite the situation, his voice was steadily creeping back towards cheerfulness; no matter what happened, the man could not be kept down. Daphne felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth, due to both the finding of the kit and the man who did so. He quickly returned to her side, scraping mud from the kit's casing. Hopefully, the inside was still clean.

"Ah, good." The redhead took the first aid kit from Freddie's dirt-encased hands. "I guess it's pointless to ask, but is there any chance of us driving out of here?"

"Judging from the beating it took just now, and the way the inside is full of dirt?" He shook his head. "Not today. If there's even a half that much under the hood, I'd be surprised if it ever runs again." Well, it had been a distant hope anyway. "How's he looking?"

"Not dead." Daphne said firmly, popping the kit open. The seal had held, and the inside was perfectly pristine. "I'm going to try to keep him that way."

"I'll check over the truck for anything we can use." Fred shrugged, a bit helplessly. Daphne was better at patching people up than he was, and the situation didn't allow them the luxury of both turning their attention to Abraham anyway. "_Something_ had to have survived." Hopefully, something that would help _them _survive.

"Hm." The redhead had stopped paying attention to her boyfriend, focusing wholly on the injured man before her. She could do this. She'd taken a class on first aid... more years ago than she was comfortable with. She took a slow breath. "Ok, ABCs."

Airway and breathing, those were obviously in order. As for circulation, she found upon checking his pulse at the wrist, it was steady and surprisingly strong. That was reassuring. His skin pallor, what little she could see of it, was definitely too pale, and his skin felt slightly cold. Given his pulse and breathing, she didn't think he'd gone into shock yet, but that didn't mean he wouldn't. Carefully, she tapped him lightly on his unburned cheek.

"Abraham..." She tapped twice more, a touch more forcefully. "Abraham, can you hear me?" Despite her attempts, he gave no indications of rousing. Not the best sign. For the moment, it seemed she'd have to do without his help. Ok, she knew this. Leaving aside the mental half of things, what were her next steps?

Step one, damage assessment. Bleeding, Breaks, Burns, and Bodies. Bleeding was surprisingly minimal for the amount of blood covering him. The dirt packed onto him was responsible for plugging him up, she assumed. Breaks, she could not find, though she'd need him awake to tell her for sure. Burns, well, those were plentiful. Even with the furs taking the brunt of the flames, most of Abraham's face and arms were covered in second and third, creeping into fourth degree burns. At least three quarters of his hair was gone, with the rest badly scorched. The sight of his twisted, bubbled, and in some places blackened flesh was both horrifying and nauseating, like rotting steak and half-tanned leather merged into one, with a dash of overcooked bacon... As for bodies, that is to say, foreign bodies, she found nothing but the ubiquitous dirt.

This, naturally, led to step two: treatment, starting with the most threatening injury. The burns were, of course, the most pressing problem. Not only were they the source of the bleeding, they were practically magnets for infection and an open invitation for shock. Unfortunately, her first aid kit lacked the most important tool for cleaning said burns. She needed clean water, and lots of it. The dirt couldn't be allowed to stay, it was far too, well, dirty, but she couldn't risk using a cloth or bandage to wipe it away. With severe burns, the lightest of touches could cause extensive damage, and she didn't have the training to clean such wounds. She shook her head to clear away the ensuing mental image.

"Freddie," She stepped away from the Cajun, calling out to the blonde as he rummaged about on his knees in the truck's bed. The best way she could help Abraham was to get him to a hospital before his condition worsened. "Find anything?"

"Up front," Freddie waved his hand without looking at her, focusing on whatever he'd found. "We've got one canteen, a couple of power bars, and a bunch of shotgun shells. Haven't found the shotgun." He sat back for a moment and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, which smeared the dirt on both spectacularly. "Back here, though, jackpot." He nodded her over with a grin. "Check it out; most of my trap made it."

"Honey..." Her voice trailed off warningly, the slightly more intimate than usual nickname conveying just how carefully he needed to select his next words. She tried to be an understanding girlfriend, but this was most certainly not the time to indulge his trap obsession.

"Uh," Fred floundered for a moment. "The _useful_ parts of my trap made it." He amended. "I mean, they're covered in mud, but we can make all kinds of stuff out of 'em. I mean, with the ropes and tarps alone we've got a tent, or a sled-stretcher-thing to pull Abraham on, or a raincatcher, all kinds of stuff." Daphne felt this was much more acceptable than an incomplete monster trap.

"Good, that's... yeah." She nodded, looking at the various components. "Let's do that sled idea. We can't wait around for him to wake up, we need to get out of here as soon as we can."

Daphne had always been impressed by, and sometimes envious of, Freddie's building skills, but now she was simply grateful for them. Under his direction, the two of them quickly whipped together a snug wrapping, padded with the truck's seat stuffing, to keep the Cajun from being jostled too much as they pulled him on the sled. The sled itself was little more than a frame made from pieces of the truck and the trap, with two of the air tanks from the trap lying underneath it to become makeshift wheels. It wasn't pretty, and they couldn't turn it without taking the frame off the tanks and setting them to roll in the right direction, but it allowed them to move the large man and all their scavenged supplies.

Before they wrapped him up, the redhead used as much water from the canteen as she dared to try and clean some of the dirt from Abraham's burns. It wasn't much, but even the relative cleanliness was a huge step up. For good measure she practically drowned them in disinfectant and topical antibiotics before wrapping them with a single layer of the lightest gauze in the kit. All throughout, he did not stir. Hopefully, and that was a word Daphne was very quickly becoming attached to, the little medicine she'd practiced and Freddie's sled would see him to safety.

After packing the supplies and man into the sled, however, they found themselves met with a problem. Namely, they had no clue where they were. It stood to reason, by dint of the Beast's territorial monsterdom and the greenery around them, that they were out of the bog. And, judging by the position of the afternoon sun and the trail left by the truck, they were, in fact, East of said bog. This, however, did them little good. The bog was, from what they remembered of the map, a very irregular shape, with many dips and bumps and wavy boundaries. The fact that it was West of them at this specific point did nothing to tell them if it was merely a small outcropping of bog standing between them and the highway, or if it was a path directly through the heart of the whole thing.

Freddie put forth the idea of simply following the outer edge of the bog, as that would eventually lead them to the highway. Daphne, however, pointed out that the bog stretched for miles in every direction, and going around it the wrong way could take more time than Abraham had to spare. Fred, of course, countered that standing around doing nothing wasn't exactly helping either. Daphne responded to this by making him climb a tree.

"Anything?" She called up to him. Tightly clinging to the trunk as he was, he still managed to shake his head quite visibly.

"This tree's not tall enough." He yelled down. "I can't see past all these other trees." This was rather unfortunate, as the tree he was in was the only tree in the immediate area that wasn't too dead to hold his weight higher up. "What now?"

"Now? Get down from there!" The heiress demanded. Despite the fact that she had ordered him up there in the first place, she was still quite concerned for him. "_Carefully_." To be honest, she was now wishing she hadn't told him to do something so risky in the first place; the last thing they needed was for him to fall and hurt himself.

"Ok, I'm..." He trailed off, staring at something she couldn't see. "Uh, how many white owls do you think are out here?"

"What?" Leaving aside the fact that she was no wildlife expert, this really wasn't the time for... Oh. "Wait, do you see Nivicolum?" Even as she asked, the bird in question alighted on a branch next to Freddie, staring at him with half-lidded eyes.

"I see Nivicolum."

* * *

><p>Velma's grasp of the Egyptian language, ancient or otherwise, was (at least in her opinion) sub-par. Still, there were a few words she'd picked up on within the chant. Pharaoh was an obvious one, of course. Kem (the colour black, which, if she recalled correctly, was associated with fertility) and its derivative, Kemet (the ancient name for Egypt, literally Black Land, after the mud left behind by the Nile's annual overflow), she picked out as well. Nehes and Weben (roughly meaning awaken and rise, perhaps?), she was less sure of. She was relatively certain the chant was, in fact, a prayer of some kind, considering the inclusion of yet another unknown proper noun. She sighed to herself, scribbling away in the notebook she'd pilfered from Shaggy.<p>

_The Witch of the Web _(Powerful witch, based in Louisiana. Deceased. Connected with (creator of?) the Anchor)_. The Mirror Monster _(Servant of the late Witch of the Web. Provides unverified info. Find him a mirror)_.The Shadow_ (Apparently intelligent figure, roughly human in shape. Likely psychic. Apparently searching for the Anchor)._The Anchor _(Unknown. Possibly some kind of spell or magical object?)_. The Black Pharaoh _(Ancient Egyptian royal of some kind. Invoked during a ritual. Possibly connected with the Shadow or Nyarlethotep)_. He of the Thousand Masks _(Possible alternate name for the Shadow)_. The Necromancer's Paradox _(Unknown, ask Grimwood for more info)_. Nyarlethotep _(Unknown. Invoked during Egyptian ritual. Possible connection with Black Pharaoh)_. _

It wasn't much, but it was at least a first step to building a new journal. Not like she had much else to do at the moment, anyway. Tanis's chanting had quickly devolved into an outburst of rage, complete with shattered plates and incoherent shrieking. Winnie made the mistake of trying to calm the mummy down, and ended up getting tossed across the room by her animate wrapping. She landed on her feet, no harm done, but the whole thing was a bit of a scare for everyone, Tanis included. Needless to say, lunch ended after that. The littlest ghoul was down in her tomb now, with both Shaggy and Grimwood attending to her. Phantasma was, presumably, filling in Sibella on the events, Winnie had defaulted to her standard of doing wolf things outside, and Elsa was... well, somewhere.

Velma was seriously considering never speaking to Tanis again, with the way each attempt was resulting in larger and larger meltdowns.

So, here she sat, in the ruins of her room (which she still had not really cleaned up), writing down every pertinent fact related to the case. She attempted a timeline of the events she knew of, but it became rather skewed when she factored in the ritual Tanis mentioned. A two-thousand year gap tended to do that. As much as she enjoyed a mystery, this one was starting to take on a shape that she suspected was way above her paygrade. Still, it wasn't like she could just leave it alone. Even without her commitment to Shaggy, solving mysteries was simply what she did.

Ok, so she needed more information. She'd gotten all she could about the Witch and the Shadow from Shaggy. Asking Tanis about the Pharaoh or Nyarlethotep was currently out of the question. Grimwood was too busy at the moment to explain the Necromancer's Paradox. The remaining girls likely didn't have any information that she didn't already have. And, for the life of her, she couldn't find a library of any kind in the building. The Mirror Monster was, of course, in a location that she had no intention of returning to alone. Fantastic. It seemed she'd have to work on pure-

_Scree!_

Velma jumped at the screech, bringing up her pencil defensively (because that was so much better than the knife she wore on her hip) as she whirled towards the window. She blinked slowly at the creature hanging from the branch outside her window. It looked like a bat, in part. It had the right size, the same basic shape and wing-type. But, it also had features like no other mammal she knew of. It had a sharp, almost beak-like mouth and long, segmented fingers that gave it the look of an arachnid. It seemed to be _grinning_ at her.

And there wasn't one. There were dozens of them hanging from the tree's branches, with a cloud numbering in the hundreds swooping towards the school.


	13. Chapter 13

A million years later, I am finally slightly less busy. So here's a chapter. To those of you asking/demanding to know why I haven't included more of (character) or focused on how (character) feels, please try to understand that the story is only just getting started. All things in due time. To the rest of you, I hope the long absence hasn't killed your interest in this, and I thank all of you who read it. Also, to answer a question of why Velma did not know the name Nyarlathotep despite her being such a bookworm, simply recall that this story crosses over with the Cthulhu mythos, and therefore those works of fiction do no exist in their world.

**13**

* * *

><p>Spiderbats. Though the witch had never realized it, they were, perhaps, Revolta's greatest creations. Their individually small size allowed them to infiltrate when it was called for, while their massive swarms allowed for effective applications of brute force. They could easily cover large expanses, their flight leaving them unhindered by terrain. They could see in the dark. Weave webs. Claw eyes and bite throats. They could even act as conduits for her magic, extending the reach of her spells to, theoretically, unlimited ranges. The fact that each one was possessed of an increased intelligence that allowed them to carry out complex orders, making them more akin to a swarm of ravenous flying hounds than anything else, only added to their potential. The constant grinning, which only served to make them more unnerving, was not because they knew of their own power, but merely a coincidental aesthetic touch.<p>

One was dangerous. Two were potentially deadly to the unwary. There was quite probably more than one-hundred times the latter number descending upon the school. Velma, having only a loose idea of what a spiderbat was from Shaggy's stories, was not fully aware of the hazards of the rapidly approaching predicament. Even so, she knew well enough that a giant black cloud of pretty much _anything_ was usually a bad thing to have swooping down on you, doubly so if that anything happened to be made of known servants of a megalomaniacal witch. Keeping an eye on the window, she backed out of the room, turned on her heel, and jogged towards the foyer, hoping to come across one of the Ghouls (or, Miss Grimwood and Shaggy, ideally) along the way. At the stairs, she met Elsa.

"We've got bats." She informed the golem, who nodded grimly. "Lots and lots of bats."

"I saw 'em from my window." Elsa motioned in the direction of her room. "Thought they all went up with the Witch, but I guess some escaped and... multiplied." She shook her head, starting down the stairs. Velma followed after her. "Miss Grimwood and the Coach need to know about this."

"I guess this is the first time you've seen them since she exploded, then?" Despite the unambiguous phrasing Elsa had used, Velma still wanted to be absolutely certain. A theory was starting to form in her head, and she needed all the details to be as concrete as possible. Granted, she fully expected this theory to break apart as soon as new evidence was uncovered, but she found that having a working theory or nine at all points of the investigation helped her think in different directions and notice things she might otherwise overlook. With the visions she'd been having (even if she could only recall snippets of them), the shadowy figure lurking about, the magic infused into the swamp, the Anchor, and now the rise of the spiderbats, she had a rather unfortunate idea of what was happening.

"Yeah," Elsa confirmed. "Dunno where they were hiding all this time." Well, that cinched it, then.

The Anchor was not anchoring a spell, but a soul. Velma wasn't having visions of the past, but getting caught in loose memories. The Shadow was not here now by coincidence, but because of what was about to happen. And the bats were rising again to serve their mistress once more. If Velma's latest theory was correct, the Witch of the Web had never truly died. She'd delved into one of the darkest and most difficult magics that existed to bind herself to the mortal world, so that not even death could contain her.

And now, Revolta was clawing her way back into this world.

Well, that was the current theory, anyway. Hopefully, further observations and evidence would point her towards a different idea. Velma had never actually come across a lich or lich-like monster in her travels, but she'd heard enough about them to determine that they were probable enough a being, especially when creatures with no moral qualms and lots of magical power were involved. An undead Witch of the Web (Lich of the Web?) did handily explain all the goings-on in the area, even if it did raise a few other questions. Those, however, could stand to wait until the immediate issue was taken care of. One did have to balance research with self-defense in the Occult Hunter business, after all.

They reached the bottom of the staircase, and found Sibella. The vampire had her back to them, standing across the foyer and staring out the open front door, her hair waving slightly in the breeze.

"They're moving with purpose." She said, without preamble, turning to glance back at Velma and Elsa. "It's too organized for a random swarm; they're being directed by something." A dark, blackish bruise was visible on her cheek, marking where the researcher had punched her, though it was healing with typical vampiric speed. If she was still shaken by their earlier encounter, she didn't show it. "Any ideas?"

"Closing the door might be a good first step." Velma tried, and failed, to not sound sardonic. "Whatever they're after, odds seem pretty good that letting them inside would be detrimental to our wellbeing." She realized she was laying the hostile tone on a bit too thick when Elsa cringed beside her.

"Hm." Sibella huffed to herself for a moment, but thankfully didn't offer any protest as she pulled the door shut. "Anything else, Ms. Dinkley?" She asked smoothly, only a slight edge to her voice. Velma wasn't sure if the vampire was playing nice because of the situation or because of her own right hook, but she hoped it lasted long enough for her to properly enjoy it.

"We gather everyone together," The bespectacled woman nodded towards the kitchen. "And we get in there. There are only two entrances, its got food and water, its small enough to keep the bats from swarming us too badly, and Tanis's room allows for a fall-back point." She explained, walking towards the room in question.

"That seems... extreme." Elsa blinked, following after her. "They're just bats."

"And how many of those bats did it take to entrance all of us one by one, last time?" Sibella asked rhetorically. "Two, wasn't it? Well, it took the Witch herself to snare me, but just the two bats for the rest of you. They're dangerous." Subtle boasting aside, Velma had been thinking along similar lines. How refreshing that the vampire was conspiring with her for a change.

"I don't think they can do that without Revolta." Elsa sensibly pointed out.

"Are you completely certain of that? You know, for sure, that it isn't an innate ability?" Velma countered. It was rarely a good idea to ever assume a supernatural being had forgotten its old tricks since you last saw it. "Besides that, these bats didn't come out here now for no reason, not after so long without being seen. If someone is controlling them, they'll use the main strength of the swarm to drive us apart, then use smaller groups to take us out individually. With those numbers, the teeth and claws will be enough." She explained. Granted, she was speculating, but it was certainly what she would do. "And if they do have the brainwashing magic, it's even more important we gather up everyone before anyone can be made into a double-agent." And, not to be overly dramatic, she'd learned in the last four years that preparing for the worst case scenario was usually the choice that kept you alive.

Or, kept you not dead, for several of those currently involved. Whatever.

"Ok, we know where everyone is?" The researcher queried as they entered the empty kitchen, running down her mental list of the various last known locations. She gestured towards the stairs to Tanis's room. "Those three are still down there?" Those three being Tanis, Grimwood, and Shaggy.

"As far as I know." Sibella shrugged. "And Phantasma was going to practice her newest composition last I saw her."

"The parlor, then." Velma nodded. "Ok, you get her." For a moment, she wondered about the wisdom of splitting up, but better they do so now and get everyone together before the bats found a way inside. "Elsa, check on the downstairs group and bring them up to speed on the situation. I'll..." She paused. "Oh, Hell," She whirled about to face the two ghouls. "Where are Winnie, Scooby, and Matches?" The girls stared at her for a moment, then turned to look at each other.

There was a moment of dawning realization across the faces of the two students, which told Velma all she needed to know.

They were still outside.

* * *

><p>They made better time than Daphne had expected, though far worse time than she'd hoped for. The cobbled-together sled they were pulling Abraham on helped, though the cylindrical tanks that served as wheels were completely unable to turn and jarred everyone with each bump they hit. Still, with Nivicolum leading the way, they avoided the worst of the going and stayed out of the Bog to boot. Daphne wasn't sure if it was a property of all owls or just this one, but she lived up to Van Ghoul's words, and was somehow able to steer the couple and their cargo just around the edge of what the Beast seemed to consider its territory. The heiress could see the monster gliding along in time with them as it made sure they stayed out, barely visible as a hulking shape in the dim, murky dark of the Bog.<p>

They continued on in that way for some time, keeping one eye on the Beast and the other on Nivicolum as they struggled with the weight of the wounded man. The slog sapped their already taxed strength, and their own injuries, however minor, made themselves more and more known. Her ankle was swollen and throbbed with each step, his right hand and arm were wrenched from how he'd improperly held the shotgun when he shot the Beast, never mind the myriad of cuts, bruises, and general battering they'd both suffered at the hands of the Bog's sole resident. She now considered it a small mercy that the Cajun had yet to awaken; they were miserable enough without hearing his moans of pain and angry curses added to the mix.

At least the ground was dry. With their current levels of weariness, Daphne was sure so little as a mud puddle would be enough to render the sled utterly inextricable; bare dirt and patches of grass were giving them enough trouble already.

Still, they pressed on. With no real way of knowing how far from civilization the Beast had dropped them, they had to travel as far and as quickly as possible, lest dark fall before they made it to a road. With no food, very little water, and a heavily injured man along for the ride, being forced to camp out was the last thing they needed. Too bad Nivicolum couldn't-

Daphne suddenly froze, her head tilting slightly to the side as she stared at nothing. Freddie, fatigued as he was, was instantly brought to a stop next to her by the weight of the sled. Too weary to muster up surprise at this, he merely raised an eyebrow at her.

"Daph, wha-"

"Shhhhh…." She shook one hand, her eyes sliding closed. "I hear something." Movement, quick and thick, like heavy flags whipping in a strong wind. And something else… It was high-pitched, to the point that she could only catch the edge of it, made up of a mass of overlapping yips and cries and screeches. "And it does not sound good."

It wasn't coming from the bog, which was a small positive note in a sea of negativities. Instead, it was coming from the opposite direction, to their left. Of course, because it had just been that sort of day, the only thing visible to that side was the hill that sharply grew from the ground. The redhead sighed in an overly dramatic fashion, too mentally exhausted to protest this turn of fate further.

"Maybe we can go around." Fred suggested, already resigned to the fact that they were going to check out the strange sounds one way or another. Daphne nodded in agreement; the hill couldn't possibly be all that big around.

Nivicolum, watching them from her perch above, gave a single - and to Daphne's ear, derisive - hoot, and lifted from her branch. Almost spitefully, she glided over the incline and out of sight beyond the crest of the hill.

"Oh, you _ffffff_eathery creature." The heiress narrowed her eyes at the spot the owl had vanished. She had no doubt in her mind that the ornery avian wouldn't bother to wait for them, which meant they didn't have time to navigate around the upward slog. She sighed, looking to her boyfriend. "Well, shall we?"

"Guess so." Fred nodded tiredly, a slight smile at one corner of his mouth. "It's nice to be chasing mysteries again." She couldn't tell if he was joking, nor could she quite sort out whether she shared that particular opinion or not.

The incline wasn't incredibly steep, but any angle beyond flat was a massive undertaking to scale at this point. If they'd not already tied Abraham to the sled, they would have now been forced to affix him to it, lest he slide right off. In his current state, Daphne doubted he'd survive rolling down the hill. She almost doubted that she would, for that matter.

Still, with a lot of groaning and grunting and quite a bit of pulling at the grass in front of them with their hands to wring out every bit of possible extra leverage, they crested over the top of the mound. Pulling the sled up after them, the pair practically collapsed onto the grass as soon as Abraham was beyond the point of possible backslide. When they had caught their breath enough to look up, the couple found that they had quite the view before them.

Directly before them, about a quarter of a mile away and situated on an even larger hill than the one they stood on, stood a small mansion, or perhaps a large plantation house, in an obvious state of disrepair. It was surrounded by a deep trench, possibly a moat, and surrounded further out by sickly-looking grass and trees and what seemed to be a cemetery. The only sign that it was inhabited came in the form of a tiny sedan that was parked by the moat; it actually looked to be clean and in working order, at least at this distance.

Also, the sky was filled with a swarm of screeching, eight-limbed bats. Most of them appeared to be rather on the large side for bats, with wingspans that looked to be almost as long as Dahne's arm. Just one of the horrible creatures was more than enough to make the heiress' skin crawl, the massive numbers almost had her heading back towards the bog. She heard Freddie let out a low whistle as he took the scene in.

The spiderbats whipped through the air in droves, and three distinct groups could be discerned amongst the chaotic cloud of wings and fur. The biggest and most obvious pack encircled the building itself, looking almost like a tattered, rotating dome of dark cloth. A second, much smaller group seemed focused on something to the…. east, according to the position of the afternoon sun. Whatever it was, it seemed to be just inside the sprawling borders of the bog, so she couldn't imagine it was going to be having the best time. The third group was the smallest of all, and covering ground quickly as it zeroed in on….

"Freddie, there's someone out there!" If the bats along hadn't kicked Daphne's heart rate back up, it would have been spiking now.

"Huh?" Fred followed her pointing finger, eyes widening when they fell on the rapidly approaching figure. It was hard to make out much between the distance, speed, and constant dodging, but the baby blue clothes and brown skin were visible enough. "Oh." Whoever it was, they seemed to have noticed the couple, as they were heading right for the sleuths.

The blonde wasted no time in turning back to the sled and freeing a spare bit of metal he'd squirrelled away. It was only about two feet long and not exceptionally sturdy, but it would be better than swatting bats with his bare hands. Daphne, sharing the sentiment, reluctantly grabbed the only weapons she could: Abraham's boots. Heavy, strong hiking boots they were, she held one each hand by the laces and tried not to think about all the built-up dirt and sweat that could come flying out when she swung them.

She turned away from the sled and looked back to the much-closer figure in time to see it leap up and swat a swooping bat from its path before landing on all fours and continuing to dash towards them. She had a brief moment to consider how odd it was for someone to be running like that, nevermind running like that so quickly, before Freddie caught her attention by placing himself between the approaching person, along with the bats following them, and herself. Her brain quickly filed the protective action away for later happily squealing over, and she moved to stand beside him.

Now the person was close enough to actually fully make out, and Daphne actually took a double-take in her surprise. The person did not have brown skin, she had brown fur. And claws. And incredibly frizzy reddish-orange hair that both impressed the heiress with its shade and made her cringe with how poorly it was maintained. For a bizarre moment, she found herself more concerned with the knots and tangles the girl would have than she was with the fact that the girl was some kind of wolf-girl. With a trip to the salon, she could really just look fantastic.

"What are _you_ guys doing out here?" The girl demanded immediately, skidding to a halt before them. Daphne watched her hair bounce for a moment, feeling a twinge of jealousy at the natural springiness. It was almost criminal that such hair was not being looked after. She then dismissed the whole line of thought, as this was really not the place or time. "Er," The wolf-girl paused, taking in their dirty, disheveled, damaged, and generally worn-down appearance. "You guys are Fred and Daphne, right?"

"...Winnie?" Freddie managed to piece things together slightly before Daphne. Shaggy's letters had described the girls well enough, noting both Winnie's hair and her preference for blue, but had failed to make mention of the fact that she was some kind of monster. Why was it no one could think to write down pertinent information, such as what a bunch of magic weapons did or the fact that at least one of your students was a supernatural being, anyway?

"Yup!" The wolf yipped brightly. "That's my-"

"Look out!" The bat swooping in on Winne was knocked out of the air with a wet thud as one of Abraham's boots went sailing into it. The girl had spun herself around and was crouching next to Daphne before the footwear hit the ground.

"Whoa, nice one!" Winnie grinned up at the heiress, showing off her impressive chompers. Daphne was a bit too busy spinning up the other boot by the laces like a sling and stone to grin back. The other bats in the swarm following Winnie screeched in unison as they began to descend upon the trio.

Then, Daphne felt Nivicolum alight on her shoulder.

The bats immediately broke off their advance, scattering in all directions as they scrambled in mid-air to avoid the owl. Whether it was some leftover instinct or the result of some spell Van Ghoul had left on his companion, Daphne couldn't guess. Either way, the spiderbats parted before them like the Red Sea before Moses. In that moment, it felt like a miracle of comparable magnitude.

"Oookay." Freddie slowly lowered the bit of metal in his hand, watching the flying beasts swarm around them in an agitated, but careful, perimeter. Confusedly, he glanced back at the girls, his eyes settling on the bird. "I'm _really_ glad your friend needed you to watch her."

"Y-yeah." Daphne let the boot lose its momentum, breathing a sigh of relief. The talons digging into her shoulder were less than pleasant, but she considered it an acceptable pain at this point. Far better than what the bats' claws would feel like, that was for sure. "We should probably get inside now."

"Right." Fred nodded, stashing the length of metal back on the sled and picking up the pull-rope once more. "Let's get-"

Nivicolum then reaffirmed her position as the bird from Hell by taking off from the heiress' shoulder and shooting ahead to the school. The bats took notice immediately.

"Oh crap." Daphne dropped the boot, grabbing up the metal in one hand and the rope in her other. Winnie instantly became the couple's favorite person in the world by taking up position at the back end of the sled and pushing. "Get inside!"

* * *

><p>Scooby Doo was a simple dog. He, like many of his kind, wanted nothing more than to eat, sleep, play, and enjoy the company of his friends. And, while the amount of eating was far greater than any Great Dane, or any canine for that matter, could hope to accomplish, and the playing often involved crosswords and painting and other sapience-required tasks, he felt himself to be an average specimen in all departments. Well, except looks. Even he had to admit he was a handsome devil.<p>

Sure, he tended to cringe away from from danger. And threats of danger. And anything even remotely possibly a threat of a threat of danger. But, really, was it such a bad thing that he loved life to the extent that he could not stand the thought of it ending? He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day, after all. And not getting into a fight in the first place just cut out the middleman, really.

This was something that Scooby had learned early in his life, and it proved true time and time again. Even now, at a stately eleven years of age, he knew it was a fact of life that could not be ignored. Others may call it cowardice - often, in fact - but they didn't live on four legs, with every scary thing towering over them like giants. Even on his hind legs, he was far smaller than most monsters he'd had to face over the years.

So that is why Scooby found himself shivering in terror inside of a hollow log as Matches angrily breathed gouts of flame at the bats that swarmed around them. The Great Dane may have become slightly more bold from his time spent here at Grimwood's, but he hadn't made _that_ much progress. The mythical beast could handle this.

The dragon would have done well to take shelter with his friend, but his own size and pride prevented it. Simply put, a Dragon did not run from _bats_, no matter what their numbers. Even though he was still a child by his kind's standards, he knew he could not sully dragons everywhere by choosing to simper away in some dark nook.

Even if it did seem like he wasn't going to win this fight.

Matches caught stray bats here and there with his flame, which had only grown in size and strength with his lung capacity, but the main bulk were too nimble and high for him to accurately aim his attacks. The wind, not to mention the sheer force of the bats' collective flapping, pushed his flame off course and stole its heat. He swiped at those that dove close to him, too low for him to use his flame without risk of setting the area on fire, but only the slowest failed to avoid him while even more swooped in from behind.

Their claws could not pierce his scales, but they were small enough to slip between them, and the Spiderbats were smart enough to use this fact. While he had been more annoyed and worried for Scooby than anything else, the moment Matches felt one of his scales tear out from his back turned that worry back towards himself.

The dragon whipped his head around, letting off a blast of flame directly above his back, barely angled up enough to keep the flame from hitting the ground before it died. Matches cringed as the heat burned his exposed skin, but didn't let up until his breath was exhausted. The Spiderbat that was coming in to exploit his missing scale found itself burned to death instantly, its corpse overshooting him and hitting the ground.

Matches felt a moment of satisfaction at the kill, but it vanished as a set of claws slid under a scale on the back of his neck. He snapped his head up quickly, trying to force the gap closed, but this only served to drive the bat's claws into the flesh beneath the scale. The dragon roared in pain, whipping his head back and forth to try and dislodge the winged creature. The bat held on, curling its claws deeper into the neck despite the facts that the intense shaking had dislocated its anchored hip and the impacts against Matches' head had battered it greatly.

The other bats wasted no time taking advantage of the dragons distraction, descending upon him like a school of hungry piranha. He threw himself about wildly as he felt the multitudes of claws forcing their way under his protections, recklessly shooting out small bursts of flame almost randomly as he contorted and rolled along the ground. Several bats were crushed by his weight, but most of the cloud simply released him for just long enough to avoid death, before latching on again.

Matches struggled against the Spiderbats for many minutes, but exhaustion soon set in. His flame died, and his resistance slowed, then stopped. To tired to fight back, he lay on the ground, helpless. The bats let out a screech of victory, and set about the task of dismantling the dragon.

So focused they were, that they did not notice Scooby until he was tearing them apart.

A full half the group were lost to the Dane's teeth, claws, and muscle before they could disconnect from Matches, the tightly-packed-together bats allowing for clustered kills. Two more were swatted from the air as the remainder took flight. Those that were left, less than a dozen, warily circled the snarling canine, looking for an opening.

If there was one thing the Great Dane feared more than losing his life, it was to lose his friends.

As the bats closed in, Scooby Doo stood his ground.

* * *

><p>Perhaps it was silly, but Elsa had always been a bit unnerved by Tanis' tomb. Perhaps it was the isolation, or the age of it, or just how <em>solid<em> it felt. Elsa was a large, strong girl; the immovable pillars and floor that did not so much as creak under her feet were things that she could not get used to.

The very purpose of a tomb wasn't something she liked too much either. The gold, the long-collapsed furniture, the broken pottery…. All these things were meant to stay in this room, forever, with their owner. Even the weight of the sarcophagus lids reinforced the idea that once you were placed here, you did not leave. She didn't know how long Tanis and her father were in their cases, aware but trapped, but she shuddered to think of it. No wonder the mummy refused to rest without a light.

Praying to never find herself in such a situation, the golem quickly passed through the tomb proper and into the rooms beyond.

"I didn't mean it…" She heard the trio before she found them. Sobs were evident in Tanis' voice. "I just," she sniffled, "I just got so angry."

"Of course dear," Grimwood crooned sympathetically. "We know you weren't trying to cause any harm. We just want to understand what upset you, that's all."

"I told you, _I don't know!_" The girl insisted. Elsa, having followed the voices, found them, in one of the smaller anterior rooms. Tanis was curled up in Shaggy's lap, burying her face in his shirt as he concernedly held her. Miss Grimwood sat just across from them, torn between frustration and worry. "I just said that name, and I got angry….."

"Elsa." Shaggy noticed the golem first, looking relieved for the distraction. Grimwood turned to look at her, and picked up on her anxiousness immediately.

"Whatever is the matter?" The Headmistress rose from her seat. At the tone of her voice, Tanis looked up as well.

"Um," Elsa hesitated slightly, not sure how to state the seriousness of the situation without sounding alarming. "How much of an emergency would it be if a couple hundred Spiderbats were attacking the school right now? Cause that….. that's happening."

* * *

><p>"Alright, we stick close and move fast." Velma instructed. "If we get bogged down, the whole lot of them will bury us under numbers." Shaggy flinched, but his expression remained determined. Elsa still didn't consider the bats to be actual threats, but her grim look betrayed her worry for the others.<p>

"Obviously." Sibella helpfully added. She might have decided to tread carefully around the occult hunter, but the vampire hadn't been entirely defanged. That was to say, Velma mentally backpedaled, her sarcasm still had some bite. Er. Her tongue was still shar….. Sibella remained passive-aggressively hostile.

"Phantasma," Velma ignored Dracula's daughter as best as she could manage, testing the swing of her dagger against the soreness of her shoulder. "You're absolutely certain of where they are?"

"Of course!" The phantom said fiercely, her voice free of any kind of mirth. She pointed to the left of the main doors. "Straight that way, on the edge of the bog."

"Alright," Velma nodded, memorizing the exact angle. "Go, we'll catch up." Phantasma didn't even wait for the sentence to end before she sunk into the floor and shot towards Scooby and Matches through the ground. It was a helpful trick for the surprise attack, but she wouldn't be much more than a distraction without a weapon. "Everyone ready?" The two ghouls and their coach nodded.

Without waiting further, Velma threw open the doors and they charged into the waiting swarm.


End file.
